Our People

    College Farm® is located in the heart of Pennsylvania's "dutch" country, between Lancaster and
    Harrisburg. Many familiar candy and snack food brands are produced in the Central Pennsylvania 
    region, including chocolate candy, pretzels, chips, and cookies. Our local labor force enjoys
    a well-earned reputation for having a strong work ethic, high motivation, and excellent job skills.
    Some of our own employees have been with us for more than 30 years!

    To do our bit to help conserve energy, our plant operates 4 days a week.  Production employees 
    work four 10-hour days, saving on transportation costs for those who drive to work (some walk)
    and, perhaps more importantly to them, making every weekend a long one.  And no, this isn’t a 
    new idea.  We’ve had the 4-day work week since the 1970’s.

    We work hard to develop our employees through structured training, annual evaluations, and 
    careful hiring.  Almost every operator position in our company has a custom training program
including videos and tests.  Operators must successfully pass this training to be classified as an operator. Simon Candy sponsors
its own candy making class.  We also allow the PMCA (Pennsylvania Manufacturing Confectioner's Association) to use our plant
in a Hard Candy seminar which is open to PMCA members.

Our CIP (Continuous Improvement Process) program is led by hourly employees. The CIP has several core cultural goals: to always strive to improve the way we work, to push decisions down to the plant level, and to grow our employees in and away from the job. In our plants, we have a "zero accident" goal. We have in place a PA State Certified Safety Team made up of hourly employees who continually audit our plants. The team has initiated programs from pre-work stretching exercises to ergonomic work studies.

Between 1949 and 2004, our company was owned by just two families. The original owners operated the company for 25 years. Our current management has been led by members of the same family for nearly 30 years, a significant figure even among family-owned businesses. Founders Charles and Margaret Simon sold Simon's Candy Company to family friends John and Eleanor Hess in 1974, who christened the new company JoEl, Inc. After Mr. and Mrs. Hess retired, the reins passed to their daughter and son-in-law and their children. In October 2004, JoEl, Inc. was sold to longtime customer The Quigley Corporation, and was renamed Quigley Manufacturing Inc.

We believe that our company's standards for quality and continuity mesh well with the principles behind the organic movement. College Farm® Organic will continue to be a leader in providing high quality candies for those choosing an organic lifestyle.

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