The latest additions to Deep Eddy’s distillery and production facility

Deep Eddy Vodka’s young production facility in Buda, Texas became fully operational in August of 2017. The Buda distillery has the capacity to produce over 5 million cases per year and employs roughly 55 people operating on a two-shift schedule. The distillery is also home to Deep Eddy bottling, warehousing, and quality functions as well as the Deep Eddy Ops Leadership Team.

In September, Heaven Hill Recruiting Manager, Josh Eckhardt, and the Deep Eddy Leadership Team organized a hiring blitz to conduct interviews with potential second shift candidates. The team expects to add five new full-time employees as a result of the blitz. The additional employees will replace temporary workers as Deep Eddy Operations transitions away from its traditional reliance on a temporary workforce to permanent employment.

Additionally, the Operations team is focused on continuous improvement (CI) and is practicing Kaizen to engage its employees in plant-wide CI efforts. The Kaizen events have been fruitful as the production employees have embraced the effort and have provided many great ideas aimed at enhancing quality and improving efficiency by focusing on processes.

“Kaizen events give employees a platform to provide direct feedback and for management to understand what employees need in order to make even small improvements”, said Distillery Plant Manager Marc Cavazos. “We are investing in our people by listening and responding to their suggestions. As a result, it has made the team stronger and more engaged, and the communication both within and between departments has improved”.

 As Deep Eddy continues to grow, the company is also investing in new and upgraded equipment to support brand growth while also increasing efficiency. Partly as a result of Kaizen, new equipment has been installed at the Buda distillery, including Big Ass Fans to keep employees comfortable, a barrel shaker, and an automated bottle dumper for its 50ml bottling line (pictured below). Soon more enhancements such as a new shrink bundler (pictured below) will be added to improve performance and enable the production of the Deep Eddy 100ml package to be moved from Heaven Hill’s Bardstown facility to Buda. ​