UPDATE: Amoroso Layoffs Now “A Great Opportunity”


Joseph DiStefano over at PhillyDeals apparently spent his evening stalking Len Amoroso in order to get the king of hoagie rolls to make some sort of comment on yesterday’s news that the company was laying off its entire team of Philadelphia delivery drivers. And this morning, he got what he was after. This, from the PhillyDeals blog:

Len Amoroso, boss-owner of Amoroso’s Baking Co., sent a note this morning confirming my report he’s replacing the current workforce of 77 Philadelphia-based delivery drivers with “a new distribution system” which he calls “a great opportunity” for his company and its “Driver Salesmen” to “keep our great brand viable and competitve for years to come.”

This “great opportunity” is apparently a first shot for the (soon-to-be-former) Amoroso’s drivers to essentially own their own bread delivery company and route–to do for themselves what they were formerly being paid by Amoroso to do. And while this might seem like a sweet deal to the entrepreneurially-minded, a lot of these drivers have been company men for a long time and have probably become pretty accustomed to just doing a job and collecting a paycheck. No word yet on exactly how many of Amoroso’s “driver salesmen” are taking the company up on the offer.

On the other half of this story (the rumor that yesterday’s layoff announcements were just a prelude to the closing of Amoroso’s historic 55th and Baltimore bakery) Amoroso also said, “We have no plans or intentions of moving our bakery operation to Vineland, NJ, as was reported.  There are no truths to that rumor.”

So that’s good news. It looks like Philly will be keeping its hometown bakery in Philly. At least for now.

Amoroso: We’ll keep Philly plant, make drivers buy routes [PhillyDeals blog]