BURLINGTON – Tricia Bisson pointed to her photo on the colorful wall of fame recognizing employee contributions. It says she is “a star performer” and commends her can-do attitude that “continually inspires her fellow Rhinos.”

Next to her plaque is one featuring John Ritchie, a distribution worker and her fiance.

The two met at Rhino Foods and continue to work at the Queen City Park Road factory, known for producing ready-to-eat cookie dough, brownie bits and snack pouches.

A first shift team leader in operations, Bisson, 35, thought it was wild they were both chosen.

“It’s nice to be recognized for your hard work. And Rhino does a lot of that here,” she said.

Bisson’s life was very different five years ago. She was incarcerated, in recovery from substance use and getting out soon, she said, when representatives of the company came to jail and hired her.

The 33-year-old Burlington company is well-known for implementing progressive employment policies and hiring members of marginalized communities. One of its more recent endeavors involves stepping up support for employees in recovery.

Rhino now holds a voluntary hour-long recovery group every Wednesday – called Rhinos for Recovery – in its “Crash Cafe,” a spacious area for employees to gather, with a kitchen offering free food, tea and coffee. (A group of rhinos make a crash, explains a poster on the wall.) At one end of the room, a small green freezer labeled is full of cookie dough samples.

Among the attendees is Bisson, who has been sober for six and a half years and credits the company for supporting her and changing her life.

“It’s important to me that they believe in giving people second chances,” she said.

Rhinos for Recovery came out of conversation with employees about two years ago, according to Rooney Castle, president and CEO of Rhino Foods.

At that point, the company already had a reputation as a recovery-friendly workplace. But concerns about the potential for employees to relapse or be tempted by dealers in the parking lot surfaced and eventually reached Castle. He raised the matter at a companywide monthly meeting and asked the employees what would work for them. They decided to hold a series of listening sessions over two weeks with people in recovery and a facilitator from Recovery Vermont. 

The sessions, which Castle said he attended, identified three employee needs: a safe space at work for those in recovery outside Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous; a desire to change the narrative and destigmatize substance use disorder; and training sessions on how to deal with issues such as substance use and overdoses.

Three people in recovery then volunteered to host hourly sessions at Rhino and the company provided basic training for them to do so. They shared their recovery journey, inspiring others to do so as well, Castle said. What started out as voluntary drop-in sessions every other week became popular and was expanded to weekly sessions last year, all on paid time, Castle said.

“What makes me feel good about it is that it was an idea that came from us asking people what they needed and that people trust us enough to come to those listening sessions and actually give us their honest feedback,” he said.

He is also proud to have employees step up and take on that kind of challenge, on top of their regular work, with the intention of making a difference. “That’s the thing that, I think, is the most unique.”

Patrick Fleury, an assistant third shift supervisor in operations, has been attending the sessions along with Bisson. By his own account, he was “in a pretty rough spot” when he started working at Rhino almost six years ago.

Formerly in law enforcement, Fleury, 45, said he was an alcoholic who had a hard time finding employment and even a harder time holding onto jobs. He also felt “held down” and discriminated against at other jobs.

He was referred to Rhino while working temp jobs through Working Fields, a staffing agency that works with vulnerable people, but quit three months into the job.

He tried other places and soon realized he had made a mistake.

“So I called back here and I asked for my job back and they said yeah, we’ll give you another chance,” said Fleury, sober for nine and a half years. “I’ve been here since. I have no plans of leaving. It’s where I’d like to finish out my career.”

‘Like a second home’ 

Rhino Foods began with Ted Castle selling desserts out of Chessy’s, his wife’s Burlington frozen custard shop, in the 1980s. In 1991, the company began to sell cookie dough to Ben & Jerry’s. It has since grown substantially, and Castle built on its reputation as a certified benefit corporation or B Corp, a company with high standards of purpose, accountability and transparency, by creating practices that center employee wellbeing.

These include practicing open book management, inclusive hiring, advance income loans, on-site physical therapy, English language classes, resource coordinators and a unique employee exchange program among area manufacturers to keep workers employed through seasonal fluctuations. New partners include Keurig Dr Pepper and Lake Champlain Chocolates, according to Lauren McBride, director of people and culture.

The company currently has about 240 employees of which about 190 are in operations and rest in administration, McBride said. As they are gearing up for the summer – peak ice cream season – they have made 40 new hires.

On a recent Tuesday morning, a Working Fields resource coordinator contracted through United Way waited at a table to address employee questions. The queries range from housing needs and language support to help finding a doctor, understanding medical bills or their benefits, said Virginia Finn. She has set up shop in the Crash Cafe three times a week since January, she said.

The diversity of the workforce was evident during a reporter’s visit to Rhino. Kumar Adhikari, an employee for 13 years, helped to train a group of three new employees — recent refugees from various parts of Africa — with a slideshow presentation on food safety in the conference room.  A Swahili translator helped.

Born in Bhutan, Adhikari lived in a refugee camp in Nepal before migrating to the United States in 2009. He started in production on the factory floor at Rhino and rose up the ranks to be a quality assurance associate.

“It feels like a second home,” Adhikari said. “I like that the owner of the company sits with me and eats with me.”

One early Tuesday, as employees ending the first shift streamed into the cafe to store their lunches or to grab a bagel from the counter, a tall man in a casual gray jacket sporting the company logo walked in.

Rooney Castle, 37, took over the reins of the organization after his father retired in January 2023. 

“I think it was always less about the product we’re making here – cookie dough happened to be the thing we fell into. I know specifically from my dad, who ran the business, his big focus was about team and getting the most out of people,” he said. “In order to run a good team you needed to support everybody on the team. So I sort of just inherited that and I know nothing different.”

Asked why Rhino has so many programs to keep employees happy, Castle responded, “Why not?” 

He said he’s prioritized listening to employees and centering their voices rather than making top-down decisions, and Rhinos in Recovery is an example of that approach.

“I’m certainly not the one that’s going to come up with the next best idea or understand the needs of some of the folks that we’re bringing in,” he explained. The best ideas come “from folks who have lived experience.”