Layoffs have become a familiar headline across industries, with companies in technology, banking, hospitality and other sectors cutting jobs as they look for ways to reduce costs and adapt to changing business conditions.
But one 101-year-old company has taken a very different approach.
Torani, the San Leandro, California-based syrup maker, has never laid off an employee in its history. Now, as generative AI starts changing entry-level jobs that have traditionally served as a starting point for many workers in corporate America, CEO Melanie Dulbecco is facing a question many business leaders are grappling with: Can companies adopt AI without making the employees who currently do the work redundant?
“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 issue is personal. She has spent 35 years at Torani and has been focused on maintaining the company’s long-standing commitment to its employees while preparing the business for an increasingly AI-driven workplace.
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Dulbecco joined Torani in 1991 after a friend connected her with the family that owned the company. At the time, Torani had just nine employees and generated about $700,000 in annual revenue.
The company dates back to 1925, when its founders started making and selling handcrafted drink syrups in San Francisco. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Torani moved into the liqueur business. Its coffee syrups, which later became a defining part of the brand, were introduced in 1982.
Today, Torani offers more than 150 syrup flavors used in coffee, cocktails, sodas and other beverages. Dulbecco has also credited the company with helping popularize flavored lattes, pointing to its early vanilla syrup as a product that helped establish the category.
Torani has also grown significantly under Dulbecco’s leadership. The company expects to generate more than $800 million in revenue this year and has about 500 employees. Dulbecco said the business has recorded roughly 20% annual revenue growth over the past 35 years.
For her, however, growth is not simply about financial performance.
Dulbecco said many companies typically look at the financial case first and then consider how employees fit into the equation. Torani takes the opposite approach by putting its people at the center of major business decisions, including investments in new technology.
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Instead of asking how many positions AI could eliminate, Dulbecco said the company looks at how employees can use new technology to take on more valuable work.
“What are those 500 people, or 200 people, or 20 people doing to add more value?” she said.
That philosophy has also helped Torani build confidence among its workforce as AI becomes more common in the workplace.
Because employees have not faced layoffs when the company has introduced new technology, Dulbecco believes they are more comfortable experimenting with new tools and learning new skills.
“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 said.
That employee-first approach may also be helping Torani compete in a difficult hiring environment. While many companies continue to struggle to find and retain workers, Dulbecco said Torani has not faced the same level of difficulty.
“We appreciate people in every role,” she said.