Celebrate your successes as 2020 ends

It’s been a year like no other, but the food and beverage industry responded to the challenges

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

I would imagine that we’re all ready to see 2020 in our rearview mirror.

It’s been a year unlike any I can remember, and it seems like every week there was some sort of new and terrifying thing. For example: Remember murder hornets? Whatever happened to them?

I’m sure it was the same way for all of you, especially when you suddenly had to figure out how to handle a huge surge in demand on the production floor while also protecting employees, making sure your infrastructure could support remote work, supervising construction projects without being able to travel, dealing with staffing shortages as employees got sick or had to quarantine, and any of the million other things you had to deal with.

But as we approach the end of this year, I am forcing myself to look at things from a different perspective, and I hope you do as well. It was a challenging year for us, as we had to figure out how to cover something that was entirely new and how it would affect an industry that can’t shut down. We had to reschedule a conference and then take it virtual. We had to shift from a monthly print issue to digital only.

But we did it. And if I can brag about myself and my staff for a minute, we did it very well. I take pride in that, and pride is a feeling that all of you should also share. Because through all the uncertainty, all the massive swings from Point A to Point B to Point 347.Q, all the “tomorrow can’t possibly be worse,” all the “OK, it was actually worse” — through all of it — you answered the call.

You fed the nation despite supply chain challenges, worker shortages and never-ending uncertainty. You scrambled and improvised and scratched and clawed to make sure that production lines kept running and trucks kept moving and grocery store shelves stayed stocked, even as consumers did their best to empty them. You faced impossible challenges every single day for the last nine months and somehow met every single one of them.

We’re not done. It’s not over. But take a minute to step back, breathe deep and acknowledge the incredible work you, your teammates, your company and your entire industry have done. You deserve it.

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Casey Laughman is the former Editor in Chief of Food Engineering magazine. He has almost two decades’ experience as a writer and editor for mainstream and trade publications. He spent several years as a writer and editor for two news services before becoming the editor of a legal publication and managing editor of a trade magazine that covered the commercial facilities market.