delight
A syrup maker kept every job since 1925
A cheaper state offered tax breaks. She pulled up the staff map.
Torani, the San Francisco syrup maker behind your vanilla latte, has not laid off a single employee since it opened in 1925. That streak has held through the Great Depression, World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic. Two Italian immigrants, Rinaldo and Ezilda Torre, founded the company in North Beach with five flavors carried home from Lucca, Italy. When Rinaldo died of a heart attack in 1938, Ezilda ran the business alone with two young children and her family's backing. That refusal to shed people continues under CEO Melanie Dulbecco, who joined in 1991 when the team numbered eight. When the company planned a move to its 330,000-square-foot San Leandro factory, tax incentives elsewhere were on the table. Dulbecco pulled up a zip code map of her staff and drew a radius that never left the East Bay. The plant now turns out about 450,000 bottles a day. "Most companies focus on their financials, and then people are the tools," she said. "We look at it the other way around."