When you enter a snack or bakery production facility, the first thing you notice often is the smell. If it’s a potato chip factory, you notice the heavy scent of frying oils, mixed with the savory aromas of the seasonings used to flavor the snacks. If you’re crossing the threshold of a buns-and-rolls bakery, there’s the tantalizing scent of the freshly made bread products. If it’s pork rinds, your nostrils pick up on the mix of oils, pigskin, and spices (it’s a lot more pleasant and hunger-inducing than one might expect).

The day I visited the Eli’s Cheesecake facility in Chicago, the first thing I noticed was not the sweet smells, but the welcome sign. This wasn’t a generic welcome mat placed at the entrance—the staff had gone to the trouble to create a custom, personalized sign for me, reading, “Eli’s Welcomes Jenni Spinner, Chief Editor, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery,” with the SF&WB logo and everything. It might have been a simple gesture, but it was touching. Humble editors like me don’t get such star treatment very often, so it felt very special.

Once I got all the way inside, though, I soon realized that I was not the only special person there that day. As President Marc Schulman treated me to a tour of the bustling facility, alongside daughter Elana (director of special projects), we encountered dozens of staff hard at work crafting marbled brownies, unloading freshly baked cheesecakes from the oven, spiriting speed racks from one place to another, and carefully packaging products before they were to be sent to their next destination. After thinking to myself how busy all the staffers were, and how happy they seemed, I then realized Marc and Elana greeted most of these workers by name. If the bosses of a 300-employee operation are able to remember the monikers of everyone on the payroll, that’s pretty special—and if I were one of those staffers (especially the entry-level folks just starting off on their cheesecake careers), I would feel pretty special, too.

There are a number of reasons why Eli’s Cheesecake is this month’s cover subject. One, being a lifelong Chicagoan, the company’s creamy cheesecakes and other delectable desserts have been a fixture on my culinary landscape for as long as I remember. Two, the company continues to build upon the founder’s legacy and grow its reach (a 42,000-square-foot expansion last year doubled the size of the bakery). What’s more, as you’ll read in the article, the company has a longstanding policy of recruiting and welcoming employees from communities that others might not consider (immigrants, refugees, adults with cognitive disabilities). That welcoming policy, in addition to being good business, is pretty special.