"Layoffs are by no means a necessary option," the company, which has adhered to the no-layoff principle for 101 years, has its CEO declare publicly: We do deploy AI, but we will never target long-tenured veteran employees as the first group to be laid off.

In the AI era, what is the most direct way for enterprises to reduce costs and improve efficiency? The answer of many companies is: layoffs. When business is sluggish, a group of employees are laid off; when profits fail to meet the targets, another group are laid off; now that AI can handle work, there seems to be one more reason for layoffs.

But recently, a 101-year-old American company has publicly taken a "contrarian stance": we also use AI and implement automation, but we never lay off employees.

What is more unexpected is that this company has not avoided operational crises. A few years ago during the pandemic, while carrying huge debts brought by the construction of a new factory, it suffered a 20% plunge in revenue, but it did not lay off a single person. By the end of the year, its revenue had instead increased by 15% — this company is the American syrup manufacturer Torani.

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

And now, this enterprise that adheres to the no-layoff policy is expected to exceed 800 million US dollars in revenue in 2026.

"Layoffs are only a financial calculation, with no consideration for what to do after the cuts"

Putting Torani's business philosophy in today's technology industry seems somewhat unconventional.

In recent years, from internet giants to AI startups, layoffs have almost become a routine operation for enterprises to adjust their business strategies. Some enterprises will reduce their staff size to improve profit margins and optimize organizational structure even when they are still making profits.

But Dulbecco does not agree with this practice. Of course, she does not mean that enterprises cannot lay off employees under any circumstances: if a company is on the verge of bankruptcy, there may indeed be no other options. But in her view, many enterprises have not actually reached that point, yet they still take layoffs as the first choice to solve financial problems.

The reason is not hard to understand: salaries are tangible costs. After laying off a group of employees, the expenses on the financial statements can be reduced quickly — but the problem is, after laying off people, will the business definitely get better?

Dulbecco believes that many enterprises only calculate how much money they can save in the short term, but ignore how to restore growth after layoffs:

"I think, this is just a financial calculation, without considering how the enterprise can maintain resilience and regain growth momentum. Because to achieve these goals, you still need a team."

In other words, in her eyes, employees are not only costs, but also a force that the company can rely on when encountering difficulties. This statement may sound a bit idealistic, but Torani has indeed experienced a crisis that was enough to test this set of concepts.

Revenue plunged 20% during the pandemic, no layoffs even with factory construction debts

Let's go back to 2020. At that time, Torani was pushing forward a major plan: to relocate its business to San Leandro, California, and invest in building a new production plant. Interestingly, when Torani chose the site for the new factory, the first consideration was not how to minimize the rent, but how to keep as many employees as possible.

According to Dulbecco's previous interview with *Fortune*, the company specially collected the zip codes of employees' residences, marked them on the map, and looked for a commuting location that everyone could accept. The company's goal was: The factory can be relocated, but we hope no employee will leave because of this.

However, no one expected that the pandemic would break out suddenly during the construction of the new factory. Due to the huge upfront investment, Torani had already borrowed a large amount of funds. At this very moment, the pandemic led to the closure of a large number of cafes and beverage stores, and the company's main sales channels were severely impacted.

In April 2020, Torani's revenue once dropped by 20%, the new factory was still burning money, and sales revenue suddenly shrank. For other enterprises, announcing layoffs at this time would be excusable — but Torani's management made a different decision.

Dulbecco recalled that the company discussed an internal question at that time: "When we look back at today's decisions after the crisis passes, what kind of choice will make us proud?" In the end, everyone decided to get through it together, no layoffs, and no unpaid leave for employees.

However, no layoffs do not mean doing nothing. To ease financial pressure, Torani began to comprehensively cut other expenses: cutting marketing and advertising budgets, suspending business travel, and requiring all departments to review budgets and cancel unnecessary expenditures.

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

As a result, this method really worked. According to Dulbecco, Torani's revenue began to recover in May after dropping by 20% in April 2020. In the end, the company's total annual revenue in 2020 not only did not decline, but also increased by 15% year on year.

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

AI has indeed reduced the number of new hires of the company, but existing employees do not have to worry about losing their jobs

One point needs to be made clear: Torani's insistence on no layoffs does not mean that it is a traditional enterprise that rejects new technologies.

In fact, this century-old syrup factory is also actively embracing AI and automation. It is understood that Torani has now applied AI to market research, sales forecasting, demand planning and other businesses, hoping to improve operational efficiency with the help of technology.

Dulbecco also openly admitted: AI has indeed reduced the company's recruitment demand. Without these technologies, Torani would have needed to hire more employees to complete the same work. Now that some tasks are handled by automated systems, the company no longer needs to add so many new positions.

But there is an important difference here: reducing new hires is not equal to laying off existing employees.

Torani's approach is to let automation take over some repetitive work, while providing employees with opportunities for job transfer and career development. Therefore, Dulbecco said that the company's employees will not panic because of the introduction of AI:

"Our employees do not worry about technologies like AI, because they believe that we will enhance the value of work while promoting automation, and will never do things that kill employees' development opportunities."

Torani dares to do this because it has an internal employee development mechanism called "Career Mixology": encourage employees to try different positions instead of doing the same thing all their lives. For example, an employee may start with inventory management, then move to procurement, supply chain, or even other business departments. That is to say, even if an employee's job is replaced by AI, they do not necessarily have to leave the company, but have the opportunity to learn new skills and transfer to other positions.

Therefore, at least from Dulbecco's statement, AI has already affected the company's new recruitment scale. However, Torani chooses to reflect the change in personnel demand brought by technological progress mainly in future recruitment, rather than by laying off existing employees.

Average annual revenue growth of about 20% over 35 years, does no layoffs really not affect profitability?

Speaking of which, some people may ask: Adhering to no layoffs sounds really good, but can the company really make profits all the time?

Judging from the operating data released by Torani, at least so far, this model has not prevented it from expanding its business. Founded in 1925, Torani started by producing flavoring syrups for beverages. After a century of development, its products have expanded from the initial several types of syrups to more than 150 types today.

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

Of course, Torani's model cannot be copied by all enterprises. After all, there are obvious differences in the business model, cost structure and personnel demand between the food and beverage manufacturing industry and industries such as the Internet and software development. However, in the current wave of layoffs by American enterprises, the experience of this company is indeed worth paying attention to:

According to statistics from employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in the first nine months of 2026, American companies have announced a total of 573,195 layoffs; although this figure is 39% lower than the same period last year, a large number of employees still face the risk of unemployment.

When AI can do more work, do companies still need so many people?

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

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

Torani's answer is to let them transfer to other positions and take on more valuable work as much as possible, instead of laying them off directly. But whether this approach can be sustained in the long run obviously depends on whether the enterprise has enough new business, new positions and growth space.

In addition, when a company introduces AI, its production efficiency is significantly improved and profits continue to grow, but it still decides to lay off a group of employees, is this a necessary choice for operation, or a cost reduction method that the management prefers to adopt? — What is your opinion on this question?

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "CSDN", compiled by ZHENG Liyuan, published with authorization from 36Kr.