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Melanie Dulbecco’s mantra is “Grow, baby, grow.”
That’s what Dulbecco has done for more than three decades as Torani’s first outside CEO. San Leandro, California-based Torani, the family-owned maker of café flavors and specialty beverage products, has averaged 25 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the last two decades, and expanded distribution across the U.S. and to more than 50 countries, from Korea to Norway.
Dulbecco is at home in all parts of the business, whether it’s diving deep into brand discussions with marketing and sales, hashing out plans with finance to fuel the company’s hyper-growth, taste-testing every new flavor in the R&D lab, or walking the production floor. And whether it’s joining Torani’s flash mob at San Francisco’s North Beach Parade, or creating random acts of flavor in the office or the community, she’s all in.
Early in her career, Dulbecco was sold on the idea that a strong leader needs bold visioning and strategic road-mapping to grow companies—but only if their management team and employees are truly engaged. She has put this experience to work at Torani, and her focus has been on building a lasting business with a palpable company culture, strong partnerships and quality products.
Dulbecco is deeply committed to building an organization that creates value and positive impact for all stakeholders, including team members, partners, customers, shareholders—and the community.
It’s estimated that only 0.5 percent of businesses have what it takes to reach 100 years, and less than 1 percent of companies reach $500 million in annual revenue. Tell us why you believe Torani has been able to achieve these milestones.
Torani’s success is not by accident—it’s directly tied to our radical people-first philosophy. This mindset has fueled our growth, helping us reach significant milestones, including turning 100 this year and surpassing $500 million in annual revenue. But our annual revenue and financials are a lagging indicator of success—the forward-looking indicator of success is our team members’ learning, growth and development. When our team members grow and thrive, our business thrives.
You’re a pretty hands-on CEO across all your company’s operations. Tell us about that, and the lessons you have learned along the way.
When I joined Torani, we had just eight team members and under $1 million in revenue. That size certainly required being more hands-on. Now, 34 years later, we’ve doubled in size about every four years, and with each leap, my role has transformed.
Conventional wisdom says a company’s leader must be different for major stages of business growth—I disagree, but there’s a trick to it. Through the years, I’ve learned that continuous learning, growth and development for myself are just as important as they are for everyone else.
You have been CEO of Torani for more than 30 years. What are some of the key challenges you’ve faced, and how did you overcome them?
Like any company with 100 years of history, we’ve seen many challenges—but never a single layoff.
A recent example was in early 2020 when the pandemic brought extreme uncertainty. We quickly determined how we’d make it through a potentially dramatic revenue decline while keeping everyone employed. This was non-negotiable for us.
We were also in the midst of moving our entire operations across the San Francisco Bay to a new state-of-the-art facility in San Leandro. We knew we had to figure out how to complete the move in a way that prioritized our team members’ safety, kept everyone fully employed, and put us on a trajectory to support our customers through uncertain times to better ones.
What do you mean when you say that Torani is an “opportunity company?”
We believe that businesses can and should create more opportunities for people. For us, being an “opportunity company” means everything we do centers around the question: “Will this create a circle of success for our people, customers, partners and community?”
A big part of this commitment at Torani is ensuring our team members have opportunities—economically and in learning, growth and development. Success is shared; every team member, from the manufacturing line to the C-Suite, receives financial bonuses, ESOP shares and profit sharing.
We also invest in development with programs like “Skill Blocks,” which lets our frontline team members build skills while increasing wages, and “Career Mixology,” which provides training and mentorship to help our team members switch departments and grow their careers, all so their next best opportunity might be right here.
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