Iowa Cabinet Manufacturer Takes All 800 Employees to the Caribbean

How was your bonus this year? Maybe it was pretty good, but it probably wasn’t “trip to the Caribbean” good.

Unless, of course, you work for Waterloo, Iowa-based Bertch Cabinet. The company recently announced that it will be taking all 800 of its employees on a Caribbean cruise as a thank-you for meeting their goals.

Company president and co-founder Gary Bertch told his employees in December that the trip was a go. The cruise, which will be a week long and include a side trip to Cozumel, Mexico, was previously announced as an incentive.

“We leave Jan. 8,” Gary Bertch said, according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “We’ve got four charter aircraft that will be flying directly to Miami Sunday and staying at a nice five-star hotel. Then on Monday, we’ll bus over from the hotel to the port and load up on the ship.”

Prior to the recession, the company regularly offered trips as rewards for hitting goals. But this will be the first trip of its kind since 2005.

“We finally got into the black again last year after we made it through the recession,” Bertch explained. Bertch Cabinet dropped from 1,000 employees to 600 by 2011, but has added over 200 workers in recent years.

h/t: CNN

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