With a blizzard raging and almost 1,000 employees set to drive in for up to an hour, Ashley Chapman knew there was only one thing to do: Close up shop.
The chief operating officer at Markdale, Ont.-based Chapman’s Ice Cream cancelled two days worth of shifts at the country’s biggest ice cream plant over the weekend, with Southern Ontario getting walloped with one of the worst storms in years.
To Chapman, the decision to halt production was a no-brainer.
“I don’t want to criticize other businesses, but all I know is if one single person got hurt coming into work, I would’ve held myself responsible.” said Chapman, the son of company founders David and Penny Chapman. “I live five minutes outside of town. I looked out the window and the weather was terrible.”
Getting in touch with all the employees in a hurry was made harder by last week’s Outlook Live outage, which the company depends on for its email.
“We don’t have much turnover, so calling someone on a phone number they gave us 10 years ago might not be helpful. And with the outage, email wasn’t going to be good either. So we posted on Facebook and LinkedIn,” said Chapman. “I had decreased communications because of the outage. I could only use the phone, and the weather looked horrible. Even if someone had called to leave messages, people would have probably checked Facebook before their voicemail.”
With the plant being in a semirural part of Southwestern Ontario, said Chapman, the vast majority of employees usually drive to work.
“If you’re in a big city, a lot of people can walk to work. That’s not really an option here for most of our workers,” said Chapman. “Ninety per cent of my employee base drives to work.”
Markdale is roughly two hours drive from Toronto. The closest city is Owen Sound, which is just over half an hour away.
With the town having a population of around 1,400 people, there just aren’t enough people in Markdale itself to keep the plant fully staffed.
“We need to have workers from the surrounding area,” Chapman said.
Chapman defended a decision not to pay workers for the missed shift, saying the company follows employment legislation, but also pays its workers well above the industry average.
“Our starting wage is $22.75 an hour,” Chapman said.
As for whether the world is beating down the doors to buy ice cream when the wind chill is in the minus 20s, Chapman said there’s demand all year round, even if it sometimes dips a bit.
“You’d be surprised,” said Chapman.
Even if ice cream isn’t exactly flying out the door during the deep freeze, Chapman said cutting production at this time of year was still a major step.
“We start stockpiling for the next year’s summer in November. Every single day of production is precious. Especially after we take two weeks off over the holidays,” said Chapman. “Cancelling the shifts cost me a lot of money, but morally, it was the only thing to do.”
The decision to close up shop during the blizzard was praised on social media.
”If an ice-cream factory says to stay home due to snow, that’s a sure sign we should all stay home. Chapman’s, you truly are the best on many levels,” one person wrote on the company’s Facebook page.
“Definitely a Chapman’s ice cream customer now!,” wrote another.
One even joked that the cold weather gave Chapman’s another option for production.
“With a forecast that cold, this might be a great opportunity for Chapman’s to try a work-from-home production model.”
