This $800 Million Company Never Had Layoffs in 101 Years

Beverages and syrups aren’t the only thing that sets Torani apart. The 101-year-old company has also earned a reputation for holding onto employees.

The San Leandro, California-based employer has never laid off workers in its entire history.

Now, as generative AI begins to transform the entry-level jobs that have long been a starting point for employees in corporate America, Torani CEO Melanie Dulbecco is confronting a challenge familiar to leaders across industries: How do you embrace technology designed to automate work without displacing the people who do it?

“It is going to dramatically change things, and we’re all going to live through this together, but our approach is going to be the same as it has been,” Dulbecco told Fortune in a recent interview. “How do we create great jobs through this for everyone?”

For Dulbecco, the question carries particular weight. She has led the syrup company for 35 years and wants to steer it into the AI era while preserving Torani’s longtime record of avoiding layoffs.

How Torani came to be

Dulbecco joined Torani in 1991 after a friend introduced her to the family owners. At the time, she said, Torani had nine employees and annual revenue of $700,000.

The business traces its roots to 1925, when its founders began selling handcrafted drink syrups in San Francisco. After Prohibition ended in 1933, the company shifted into liqueurs. Its now-signature coffee syrups came much later, launching in 1982.

Since then, Torani has expanded from five syrup flavors to more than 150, used in coffee, cocktails, sodas and other drinks. Dulbecco also says the company helped create the flavored-latte category, pointing to its early vanilla syrup as the product that “invented the flavored latte.”

Dulbecco added that this year, Torani is on track to bring in more than $800 million with 500 employees, registering 20% annual revenue growth across 35 years. She said that most companies focus first on financials and then consider people as tools.

“We look at it the other way around, and it works really well for us,” she added.

How Torani approaches AI

Dulbecco says Torani starts with its people, not simply the potential savings, when weighing investments in new technology like AI. Rather than asking how many roles technology could eliminate, she focuses on how employees can take on work that contributes to the team. 

“What are those 500 people, or 200 people, or 20 people doing to add more value?” she said.

That approach, she argues, has helped build trust as AI enters the workplace. Since Torani has not laid people off when adopting new tools, employees are more willing to learn and experiment with them.

“What we find is our team is more likely to embrace new technologies also because there’s confidence and an openness to learning new things because they know we’ve got their backs and they’ve got ours,” she added.

In a difficult hiring market, where employers say it is hard to hire, Torani has “not had the same challenge,” Dulbecco noted. “We appreciate people in every role,” she said. 

Beverages and syrups aren’t the only thing that sets Torani apart. The 101-year-old company has also earned a reputation for holding onto employees.

The San Leandro, California-based employer has never laid off workers in its entire history.

Now, as generative AI begins to transform the entry-level jobs that have long been a starting point for employees in corporate America, Torani CEO Melanie Dulbecco is confronting a challenge familiar to leaders across industries: How do you embrace technology designed to automate work without displacing the people who do it?