For nearly a century, or 101 years to be precise, pharmaceuticals company Torani has survived the Great Depression, 2008 financial crash, automation of American manufacturing, and a global pandemic that shuttered the very coffee shops fueling its business. Through every single crisis, the company kept one promise to its employees intact: Zero layoffs. Now, with Generative and Agentic Artificial Intelligence wiping away millions of white-collar and entry-level jobs across America, long-time CEO Melanie Dulbecco faces a dilemma that has been dividing modern boardrooms. The challenge is not just deciding how to leverage AI tools capable of replacing human labor, but doing so without ending the company’s 101-year-old employment rule, which is absolutely ‘Zero Layoffs’.As CEO Dulbecco, who has been with the company for 35 years, said, “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. How do we create great jobs through this for everyone?” Dulbecco shared the company’s history and its ‘no-layoffs’ policy in an interaction with Fortune.Founded in San Francisco in 1925 by Italian immigrants selling hand-crafted drink flavorings, Torani reportedly survived the post-Prohibition era by producing liqueurs before pivoting in 1982 to the coffee syrups that made it a household name. When Dulbecco took the helm in 1991, the operation was pulling in $700,000 annually with just nine employees. Over the next three-and-a-half decades, Torani expanded the company’s catalogue from five syrups to more than 150 varieties spanning sodas, cocktails, and coffee.Today, the San Leandro-based syrup maker operates at a scale few predicted. Torani is projected to top $800 million in revenue this year with 500 employees, sustaining an average annual revenue growth of 20% over 35 years. Dulbecco attributes this endurance to an organizational philosophy that runs contrary to standard corporate practice. She said, “Most companies focus on their financials, and then people are the tools,” Dulbecco told Fortune. She added, “We look at it the other way around, and it works really well for us.”
Torani CEO: AI is not a tool to cut employee cost for us
As artificial intelligence pressures executives to cut headcounts in pursuit of margins, Torani is betting its century-old people-first model can outlast another industrial shift.Dulbecco said that her team also takes precedence in major financial decisions when incorporating any new technology. “What are those 500 people, or 200 people, or 20 people doing to add more value?” she said.According to her, treating AI purely as a tool to slash costs, misses the larger picture. “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.Dulbecco also spoke about Torani’s wealth sharing plan that includes bonuses for every employee tied to the company’s top-line revenue and bottom-line profits, and an employee stock ownership plan that starts once an employee completes a year. She called this “sharing the wealth we create together.”“Every year people get a new tranche of shares, and every year we do a new valuation, so there’s nothing that makes me happier than when we, in a town hall meeting, share, ‘Hey, we just did our valuation, here’s been the increase,’ and then afterwards, I see a forklift driver ask our CFO questions,” Dulbecco said.