{"id":6390,"date":"2026-09-01T11:39:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6390"},"modified":"2026-09-01T11:39:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:39:35","slug":"meet-the-ceo-whose-century-old-company-never-laid-off-employees-through-the-great-depression-the-recession-or-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6390","title":{"rendered":"Meet the CEO whose century-old company never laid off employees through the Great Depression, the recession, or Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Now, as generative and agentic AI reshape entry-level work in corporate America, Melanie Dulbecco\u2014who has run the 101-year-old, San Leandro, California-based syrup maker for 35 years\u2014is wrestling with the same question facing executives everywhere: How can she adopt technology that could theoretically replace employees\u2019 work? But Dulbecco has an extra consideration, and that\u2019s navigating the AI age without breaking Torani\u2019s no-layoffs streak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Starbucks is discontinuing a blending powder for drinks after particles went \u2018airborne\u2019 and left baristas coughing and falling ill<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is going to dramatically change things, and we\u2019re all going to live through this together, but our approach is going to be the same as it has been,\u201d Dulbecco told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cHow do we create great jobs through this for everyone?\u201d<\/p>\n

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After a friend got her connected with the family that owns Torani, Dulbecco joined the company in 1991, when she said it was a nine-employee operation generating about $700,000 a year. Started by Italian immigrants who sold hand-crafted syrups to flavor drinks in 1925 in San Francisco, the company pivoted to producing liqueurs after Prohibition ended in 1933. Its coffee-flavoring business, the syrups the company is best known for today, didn\u2019t arrive until decades later, in 1982. In that time, Torani grew from five syrups to over 150 that can be added into coffee, cocktails and sodas, and Dulbecco even claimed the company \u201cinvented the flavored latte\u201d with its vanilla syrup.<\/p>\n

This year, the company is expected to bring in more than $800 million with just 500 employees, averaging 20% annual revenue growth over 35 years, the CEO said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost companies focus on their financials, and then people are the tools,\u201d said Dulbecco. \u201cWe look at it the other way around, and it works really well for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A year into Dulbecco\u2019s tenure, the then-small Seattle chain Starbucks approached Torani to become its private-label syrup manufacturer. Torani already supplied syrups to the company, but the decision split Dulbecco\u2019s team so much that they brought in students from Stanford Business School, her alma mater, to sort it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The students said Torani could succeed either way, but private labeling meant becoming a low-cost producer, and skimping on what made Torani special, like swapping high-fructose corn syrup for cane sugar. <\/p>\n

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\u201cIt made the decision easy because then all of us who were here could say, what\u2019s the business we want to build?\u201d Dulbecco recalled.<\/p>\n

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Decades later in 2020, that same instinct to preserve the company\u2019s legacy kept the company in the Bay Area. As the company outgrew its San Francisco facility, Dulbecco\u2019s team approached every employee and mapped out their respective zip codes to find a commutable site: the current San Leandro campus. Two and a half years went into planning the move, but then in March, California\u2019s Covid-19 order landed, and it became a \u201cmoment of truth\u201d for Torani as cafes and restaurants started shutting down.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Dulbecco said the company ran financial scenarios of how they would keep the business afloat without letting anyone go, and \u201cthe only way\u201d was to move as soon as possible and get their new equipment running. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe made it\u2014everyone, safely\u2014and then when things picked up again\u2014because business did go down in April\u2014it picked up because e-commerce took off, retail took off, some other things filled the gaps. We could help our cafe customers reopen their doors and our team was here,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing committed to our team, whom we care so much about, ends up really being to our benefit to continue to create the momentum and to be resilient in the hard times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The bond market is in open revolt as Trump declines to accept an Iranian peace deal and oil hits $92 a barrel<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dulbecco explained her team also takes precedence in major financial decisions when incorporating any new technology, especially AI. <\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat are those 500 people, or 200 people, or 20 people doing to add more value?\u201d she said. Treating AI purely as a way to slash costs, she argued, misses the bigger picture. Because Torani hasn\u2019t laid off people as new tech comes in, there\u2019s more trust between Dulbecco and her team when it comes to AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we find is our team is more likely to embrace new technologies also because there\u2019s confidence and an openness to learning new things because they know we\u2019ve got their backs and they\u2019ve got ours,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Dulbecco said that shows up in employees\u2019 benefits as well. Torani has a unique wealth sharing plan on top of 401(k) matching and salaries, including bonuses for every employee tied to Torani\u2019s top-line revenue and bottom-line profits, and an employee stock ownership plan that kicks in after a year. She called this \u201csharing the wealth we create together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year people get a new tranche of shares, and every year we do a new valuation, so there\u2019s nothing that makes me happier than when we, in a town hall meeting, share, \u2018Hey, we just did our valuation, here\u2019s been the increase,\u2019 and then afterwards, I see a forklift driver ask our CFO questions,\u201d Dulbecco said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dulbecco said she\u2019s talked to people at law and accounting firms who describe entry-level work changing fast around them, but Torani\u2019s entry level hiring hasn\u2019t changed because Dulbecco expects people to move around once they\u2019re in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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She called it \u201ccareer mixology,\u201d where an employee may start in an entry-level inventory role and may move into something completely different later on. She pointed to a procurement staffer named Carlos who first started at the company in an entry-level supply-chain job before working through several other positions to his current post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s mixing up his career,\u201d said Dulbecco, \u201cbuilding a broader perspective of the business, which makes him a more valuable team member as well.\u201d Torani also runs a summer internship program for their college-age children, plus \u201cfirst job programs\u201d for newcomers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a market where people say it\u2019s hard to hire, we have not had the same challenge, and I think it\u2019s because we look at roles differently,\u201d Dulbecco said. \u201cWe appreciate people in every role.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Half of remote IT job applications now carry North Korean fraud patterns, startup Endorsed finds<\/a><\/p>\n

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The company even mapped out employees’ zip codes to help choose a location for a larger facility with more digestible commute times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workplace-wellness"],"yoast_head":"\nMeet the CEO whose century-old company never laid off employees through the Great Depression, the recession, or Covid - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=6390\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meet the CEO whose century-old company never laid off employees through the Great Depression, the recession, or Covid - 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