Torani, 101 Years Old and Never Having Laid Off Employees: Uses AI but Does Not Lay Off Older Employees, Revenue Expected to Exceed $800 Million in 2026

But recently, a 101-year-old American company has publicly struck a contrarian note: we also use AI and pursue automation, but we never lay off employees.

What is even more surprising is that this company has not been without business crises. During the pandemic a few years ago, while burdened with massive debt from building a new factory and hit by a 20% plunge in revenue, it did not lay off a single person. By the end of the year, revenue had instead grown 15%—this company is the American syrup manufacturer Torani.

Recently, Torani CEO Melanie Dulbecco, in an interview with Business Insider, discussed her views on corporate layoffs: "I think layoffs are a choice." She also revealed that in its 101 years of existence, Torani has never conducted layoffs.

And now, this company that insists on not laying off employees is expected to see revenue exceed $800 million in 2026.

"Layoffs are just a financial calculation, with no thought to what happens after the cuts"

Placing Torani's business philosophy in today's tech industry makes it seem somewhat unconventional.

But Dulbecco does not agree with this approach. Of course, she is not saying that a company must never lay off employees no matter what happens: if a company is on the brink of bankruptcy, there may indeed be no other option. But in her view, many companies have not actually reached that point, yet still treat layoffs as the first choice for solving financial problems.

The reason is not hard to understand: wages are a real cost, and cutting a batch of employees can quickly bring down expenses on the financial statements—but the question is, once people are laid off, will the business necessarily improve?

Dulbecco believes that many companies only calculate how much money can be saved in the short term, while ignoring how to restore growth after layoffs:

"I think this is just a financial calculation, without considering how a company can remain resilient and how to regain growth momentum. Because to do that, you still need a team."

In other words, in her eyes, employees are not only a cost but also a force the company can rely on when it encounters difficulties. This may sound somewhat idealistic, but Torani has actually been through a crisis sufficient to test this philosophy.

Revenue plunged 20% during the pandemic, yet no layoffs despite factory construction debt

Let us go back to 2020. At that time, Torani was advancing a major plan: relocating its operations to San Leandro, California, and investing in the construction of a new production factory. Interestingly, when choosing the site for the new factory, Torani's first consideration was not how to minimize rent, but how to keep as many employees as possible.

According to Dulbecco's earlier interview with Fortune, the company specifically collected employees' residential zip codes and marked them on a map to find a commuting location acceptable to everyone. The company's goal was: the factory could move, but it hoped not a single employee would leave because of it.

However, no one expected that during the construction of the new factory, the pandemic suddenly broke out. Because of the huge upfront investment, Torani had already borrowed a large amount of money, and at precisely this time, the pandemic caused many cafes and beverage shops to close, severely hitting the company's main sales channels.

In April 2020, Torani's revenue fell 20% at one point; the new factory was still burning money, while sales revenue suddenly shrank. If this had happened to another company, announcing layoffs at that time would have been considered understandable—but Torani's management made a different decision.

Dulbecco recalled that at the time the company internally discussed a question: "When the crisis is over and we look back at today's decision, what kind of choice would make us proud?" In the end, everyone decided to get through it together, without layoffs and without putting employees on unpaid leave.

However, not laying off employees did not mean doing nothing. To ease financial pressure, Torani began comprehensively cutting other expenses: reducing marketing and advertising budgets, suspending business travel, and requiring each department to re-examine its budget and cancel unnecessary spending.

At the same time, the company also worked hard to find new sources of revenue: since cafes and beverage shops could not open for the time being, it would sell products to ordinary consumers. So Torani increased investment in online retail and grocery retail channels to make up as much as possible for the losses in its traditional business.

As a result, this approach really worked. According to Dulbecco, after Torani's revenue fell 20% in April 2020, it began to recover in May. In the end, the company's full-year revenue in 2020 not only did not decline but instead grew 15% year over year.

In her view, if a batch of employees had been laid off at that time to save costs, it would have been difficult for the company to achieve such a rebound: after all, once the market recovered, the company would still need people familiar with the business to produce products, manage the supply chain, and serve customers; retaining the original team also saved the trouble of rehiring and training employees.

One point must be made clear: Torani's insistence on not laying off employees does not mean it is a traditional company that rejects new technology.

Dulbecco also frankly acknowledged that AI has indeed reduced the company's hiring needs. Without these technologies, Torani would originally have needed to hire more employees to accomplish the same work. Now, with some tasks handled by automated systems, the company no longer needs to add as many positions.

But there is an important distinction here: hiring fewer new people is not the same as laying off existing employees.

Torani's approach is to let automation take on some of the repetitive work while giving employees opportunities for reassignment and career development. As a result, Dulbecco says, the company's employees do not feel panicked by the introduction of AI:

Torani dares to do this because it has an internal employee development mechanism called "Career Mixology": employees are encouraged to try different roles rather than doing the same thing for their entire career. For example, an employee might start in inventory management and later move into procurement, supply chain, or even other business departments. In other words, even if some of an employee's work is replaced by AI, they do not necessarily have to leave the company; instead, they have the opportunity to learn new skills and move to other roles.

So, at least judging from Dulbecco's account, AI has already affected the company's scale of new hiring. The only difference is that Torani chooses to reflect the changes in staffing needs brought about by technological progress mainly in future hiring, rather than by laying off existing employees.

With average annual revenue growth of about 20% over 35 years, does not laying off employees really not affect making money?

At this point, some may ask: insisting on not laying off employees sounds good, but can the company really keep making money?

Judging from the operating data Torani has published, at least so far, this model has not prevented it from expanding its business. Torani was founded in 1925 and started out producing beverage flavoring syrups. After a century of development, its products have expanded from just a few initial syrups to more than 150 today.

According to reports, when Dulbecco joined Torani in 1991, the company had only 9 employees and annual revenue of about $700,000. Today, Torani has more than 500 employees. Dulbecco disclosed that over the past 35 years, the company's annual revenue growth rate has averaged about 20%, and revenue is expected to exceed $800 million in 2026.

Of course, not every company can copy Torani's model. After all, the food and beverage manufacturing industry differs markedly from industries such as the internet and software development in business models, cost structures, and staffing needs. Still, against the current wave of layoffs at U.S. companies, this company's experience is indeed worth noting:

According to statistics from employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in the first nine months of 2026, U.S. companies announced a cumulative total of 573,195 job cuts; although this was down 39% from the same period last year, a large number of employees still face the risk of unemployment.

In fact, Torani's approach also leaves a very real question.

Today, AI can already write code, analyze data, generate reports, and even independently complete some tasks that originally required collaboration among multiple people. For companies, if work that originally required 10 people can now be done by only 5, what should the remaining 5 people do?

Torani's answer is to have them move to other roles and take on more valuable work wherever possible, rather than simply laying them off. But whether this approach can be sustained over the long term obviously also depends on whether the company still has enough new business, new positions, and room for growth.

In addition, when a company introduces AI, significantly improves production efficiency, and continues to grow profits, yet still decides to lay off a group of employees, is this a necessary business choice or simply a cost-cutting method that management prefers? — What do you think about this question?

This article is from the WeChat public account "CSDN", compiled by Zheng Liyuan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.