To Our Valued Customers,

At Patagonia Orchards, serving you is the most important thing we do, and your health, safety and well-being remains our top priority.  As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) begins to impact our community and daily lives, we want to assure you that we are monitoring developments very closely and taking action at our offices on a daily basis to protect and support our family of customers and employees. 

Ensuring Food Safety and Hygiene Practices
While coronavirus is not spread through food, the industry must mitigate against the substantial risks associated with the close contact between possibly-infected warehouse workers and the end consumer.

We are being vigilant about ensuring our employees are following our standard safe practices for food safety and hygiene. We have also put in place virus mitigating actions to include limiting non-essential travel, social distancing, building workforce redundancies and cross-training employees. We have issued statements advocating for consistent hygiene (handwashing and minimal face touching) aimed at containing the spread of the virus.

Our offices have increased the routine cleaning of high-touch, hard surface areas such as counters, desks, door handles, keyboards and computers, etc., as well as increase cleaning sanitation of bathroom and kitchen areas.

Monitoring and Communicating with Employees
Employees have been instructed to take increased precautions to ensure they keep themselves and everyone around them healthy.  This includes staying home from work if they are feeling ill and notifying us and staying home for 14 days if they have been in close contact with anyone being monitored for COVID-19.  New company guidelines for sick time have been established to ensure employees are supported if quarantine is necessary for themselves or loved ones.

Monitoring and Communicating with our Customers
We take our responsibility to our customers very seriously and will continue to work diligently to maintain the level of service you expect from us. We ask for your patience should we experience increased hold time on in-bound calls. Shipping time may also be increased as our carriers and suppliers deal with this unprecedented situation.

Monitoring and Communicating with Border Agencies
We will be working closely with established management and state and local authorities to handle situations as they arise in our industry and will update our customers of any changes in our border crossing schedule.

We thank you for your business and please stay safe.
​
Philip Ostrom
President