Workers are clinging to their jobs as they watch employers lay off staffers in droves. But unlike other leaders, Melanie Dulbecco, the CEO of flavored syrup giant Torani, doesn’t buy the idea that cutting employees is always necessary.
“It’s very easy for us to say layoffs are not our approach. I think layoffs are a choice,” Dulbecco told Business Insider in a recent interview.
“I get it if a company is going through bankruptcy and has to make extremely challenging choices. Otherwise, I think it’s a financial exercise that doesn’t consider how you’re going to be resilient or regain momentum—because you do that with a team.”
The 101-year-old syrup maker has made preserving jobs a priority, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company relocated its office to a new location in San Leandro back in March 2020, with the express goal of retaining 100% of its workers in the process. Dulbecco told Fortune that the company even created a ZIP code map noting where its staffers lived, so that it could choose the right location with a reasonable commuting distance. And it turned out to be a real “defining moment” for the company.
Torani had borrowed a lot of money to build the new factory, and the pandemic brought new financial uncertainty. To avoid cutting workers, Torani cut back on other expenses instead, including marketing and advertising. It paused employee travel, reviewed their budgets, and got scrappy in reducing non-essential spending.
“With significant financial uncertainty and a major Flavor Factory investment underway, we asked ourselves: What decisions will make us proud when we come out on the other side? We committed to getting through the crisis together without layoffs or furloughs,” she said.
In the end, Torani weathered the pandemic and brief drop in sales before revenue swung back up. It also pivoted to online retail and grocery to fill the void left by closed coffee shops, and ultimately, ended 2020 with a 15% year-over-year revenue spike. It’s something they couldn’t have done had they laid off their workers, Dulbecco said.
“Our approach is to take a longer-term view,” the CEO told Fortune in a written statement. “We’ve averaged approximately 20% annual growth for 35 years, we’re on track to exceed $800 million in revenue this year, and we’ve never had a layoff in Torani’s 101-year history. To me, that’s evidence that investing in people and delivering strong business performance aren’t competing priorities. They reinforce each other.
Millions of American workers have been laid off in recent years
In the first nine months of this year, U.S. employers have announced 573,195 job cuts, according to a September analysis from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It’s a substantial figure—yet pales in comparison to workers’ situation in 2025, when 946,426 cuts were announced in the same period.
The employment consultancy says that employers are laying low and weighing economic uncertainty before making sweeping layoffs like they did last year.
“Companies are in a wait-and-see period right now,” Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, wrote in the report. “Employers are facing high energy costs, an uncertain war in Iran, a rate hike that could make hiring more expensive, plus the likelihood of surging healthcare costs.”
It all amounted to one of the roughest years for American workers. A staggering 1.2 million job cuts were announced last year—up 58% from the roughly 760,000 layoffs in 2024— according to a 2025 report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
In fact, 2025 had the highest level of workforce reductions since 2020, and was neck-and-neck with the 2008 financial crisis, when 1.22 million roles were slashed. And the biggest victims of last year’s headcount bloodbath were federal workers; extreme cost-cutting efforts from Elon Musk’s DOGE crippled entire agencies, including USAID, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services. In total, about 308,000 government jobs were cut in 2024.
Meanwhile, the tech industry took the heaviest blow in the private sector. Last year, tech announced that about 154,000 roles would be slashed, a 15% increase from nearly 134,000 job cuts in 2024.
The culprit? Rapid AI implementation—and the industry self-correcting from pandemic-era overhiring. In 2025, AI was responsible for 54,836 layoff plans overall; since 2023, the tech has been connected to 71,825 job cut announcements.
“Technology has been pivoting to both developing and implementing artificial intelligence much more quickly than any other industry,” the report noted.
While new tech efficiencies haven’t swayed Torani to lay off staffers, it has impacted its hiring strategy. Dulbecco said in the Business Insider interview that automation has allowed Torani to operate with fewer new hires than it would have otherwise needed. It’s leveraging AI for manual jobs with “limited career mobility” as well as market research, sales forecasting, and demand planning.
“Our team doesn’t get worried about things like AI because they trust that we will both automate and elevate the work, that we will never do anything that squashes opportunities for people, and that we are looking out for everybody’s success,” the CEO said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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