Great brand - not so great workplace - Anonymous employee Vital Farms Employee Review

I’ll do you guys a favor, and summarize the current 4.3 rating. What you’ll notice if you page through the reviews is they oscillate between perfect 5’s and rotten eggs with almost no ratings in between. This strikes me a little odd. And as a manager, I’d be concerned that my employees are having such drastically different experiences. But I sense that isn’t the case. No one is concerned, and no one is listening. The paragraphs-long replies HR retaliates with are defenses, sprinkled with vapid jargon about conscious capitalism (there’s lots of that going on inside the walls too). Beyond odd, the polar reviews give credence to the reviews that say there is clear favoritism happening; that teams and employees are employees based not on merit but baseless preference. In truth, management is composed of a bunch of well-meaning folks who strike out while trying to put into play all the things they learned in every management book they’ve read. Just read the “interview” portion of these reviews to get a sampling of the screening practices they use before ever speaking to any candidates. “Culture Index” not common sense guide recruiting. And the tension between teams: operations, marketing, and the packaging plants, is cutting, with backchanneling and fiefdom building running rampant. The level of self-righteousness is more rancid than a filthy barn (not that they have any of those, of course, the hens are treated way better than any employee). But the chest-pounding around “ethical eggs” is hard to swallow when it's said in the same breath as belittling comments towards employees, and vendors. To paint a picture of the facade-building: I witnessed a manager ask a junior employee to ask an employee of color (there are fewer than a handful in HQ) to be in a photograph because they needed to show "diversity". Tokenism at its finest. You can be the judge if that type of environment is ethical and acceptable to you. Just be aware of what’s behind the glossy shell.