It’s a lot, producing a single egg. 

In early 2022, when the Avian flu spread across the United States at a rapid pace, Pete & Gerry’s made a business decision: they went from housing birds in their Monroe location to transforming into a campus focused solely on refrigerated storage alongside their processing facility. Recommitting to their family farm partnership model, Pete & Gerry’s chickens left the roost and the eggs now have another place to call home.   

The decision was made to remove the Monroe “egg layers,” a small portion of the business, “to be able to protect this processing plant’s operational integrity. If our birds contracted that disease, it would have affected how or when we could process again at the plant,” said Brandon Moyse, the Director of Plant Operations at Pete & Gerry’s, who started on the packing line straight out of high school in 2012 and has since risen the ranks to run the Monroe operation which employs about 100 people.   

Changing the operational focus of the location was a major undertaking and as always, New Hampshire Electric Co-op was there to help.   

Moyse said that he began working with the Co-op when he reached out for a new service to be added for the barns.   

“The right people asked the right questions and we went from there. We talked about incentives and things we could do to make our operations work more efficiently and from there, we had a great outcome,” he said. “We’re always looking for options for continuous improvement and moving towards more sustainable operations is an overarching goal for the company.”  

“Pete & Gerry’s cold storage project in Monroe – which qualified for $100,000 incentives because of the substantial energy upgrades – will deliver significant energy efficiency benefits by reducing annual electricity consumption by approximately 101,420 kWh while lowering peak electrical demand by 65.8 kW,” said Eric Sandberg, a commercial and industrial program administrator on the Co-op’s Energy Solutions team. “These savings reduce operating costs, lessen strain on the electric grid during peak periods and improve the overall efficiency of egg storage operations.”  

The project wrapped in early June, finishing the last of the two barns powered with high efficiency 33W LED fixtures – replacing 20-year-old inefficient lights – high speed overhead doors, R-90 cellulose insulation in the ceiling and R-19 in the exterior walls – exceeding code given the nature of the work – the local operation includes a total of five converted barns and things are cranking. Monroe processes 1.2 to 1.4 million eggs a day and keeps several million in storage.   

“A good testament to the energy efficiency we’ve experienced since is that when we turn all the units off in the cooler, we can maintain the temperature for a week without doing anything,” Moyse said.  

Still, he said, “It was a pleasant sight to go out on your lunch break and take a walk and hear the birds talking to each other. We all miss the chickens but are proud of the improvements we’ve built in this facility and know that our family farm partnership model offers the best care for the hens across the board.”  

Pete & Gerry’s sells from Maine to California and the eggs come from more than 350 family farms, including throughout New England.