Frito-Lay abruptly shutters Orlando plant, cutting 500 jobs

Snack food company Frito-Lay shuttered its decades-old Frito Lay plant just west of College Park Tuesday, cutting more than jobs at the facility alone. According to a required notice filed with the state Department Commerce, the company will also be cutting 46 jobs at a separate warehouse just down the street next May on Park Oaks Avenue, resulting in roughly 500 local jobs eliminated total.

A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letter, dated Nov. 4, notes that the facility near College Park at 2800 Silver Star Road shuttered Tuesday, immediately terminating the employment of 454 blue-collar employees that day, including dozens of laborers, packaging machine operators and maintenance workers involved in manufacturing operations. Frito-Lay, a $13 billion snack food subsidiary of Pepsi, also sold other properties along John Young Parkway earlier this year, the Orlando Business Journal reported.

“This was a difficult decision, as we know how much this site and its people mean to the Orlando community,” a Frito-Lay spokesperson told Orlando Weekly in an emailed statement about the closure. “This action was driven by business needs, and we are committed to treating every impacted employee with care — providing transition assistance, career support, and pay and benefits during this time.”

The WARN letter submitted to the state notes that “because notice will be provided contemporaneously with termination, affected employees will be provided 60 days of pay in lieu of the required notice period.” There was no such offer specified for the 46 employees who will be terminated in May 2026, and there is no additional clarification of whether the company will offer career support or assistance.

Orlando’s Frito-Lay plant first began production in 1965, more than half a century ago, before even the construction of the world-renowned theme parks that Orlando is most famous for today.

The letter from Frito-Lay notes that none of the laid-off workers at the Orlando plant were represented by a union, even though some Frito-Lay workers elsewhere have union representation with the Teamsters or the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). More than 90 percent of Florida workers, however, are non-union, and even union representation can have its limits on layoff protections, depending on the type of and strength of language in workers’ union contracts.

Frito-Lay has similarly announced layoffs elsewhere over the past year, in addition to other major companies like UPS, Target and Amazon that have announced plans to shed thousands of jobs just in recent weeks. As CNBC reports, some companies, like Klarna and Duolingo, have explicitly cited their ability to replace largely white-collar jobs with artificial intelligence as the reason for tightening their belts.

The layoffs at Frito-Lay here in Orlando come amid a strain in the region’s social safety net, with the ongoing federal government shutdown leaving tens of thousands of federal employees in Central Florida without pay — including TSA officers and air traffic controllers — and nearly 200,000 low-income individuals and families in Orange County alone without access to federal food aid through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Hunger relief organizations like Second Harvest Food Bank and United Against Poverty have stepped up to help provide for families in need, including federal employees affected by the shutdown. You can find a more comprehensive list of resources here or by calling 2-1-1.

If you are a Frito-Lay employee affected by the layoffs in Orlando, we want to hear from you. Contact us at news@orlandoweekly.com to share your story.

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Frito-Lay abruptly shutters Orlando plant, cutting 500 jobs

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