Keurig Dr Pepper announced this week that it will be consolidating its property in Waterbury. The company will be selling two large buildings, and moving the rest of its operations into other newly renovated spaces.
The company plans to sell its facility at 150 Pilgrim Park Road, which is valued at $14.7 million as well as its Waterbury Center facility at 228 Suss Drive, valued at $3.6 million. Its Waterbury presence will remain at 93 Pilgrim Park Road and 5 Pilgrim Park Road — which it leases, as well as at its nearby visitor center.
The announcement is just the latest in a long line of downsizing moves Keurig Dr Pepper has made in Vermont, beginning with a number of layoffs across the state in the past several years. But spokesperson Katie Gilroy said the company has no intention of leaving the state entirely. The latest land moves are viewed as part of a long-term plan.
“I would say Vermont has been an important part of our company and culture since the very founding of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and we will still have a presence in Vermont,” Gilroy said.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, founded in 1981 as a small Vermont coffee company, became the nationally known Keurig Green Mountain in 2014, and then in 2018, the company acquired the Dr Pepper Snapple Group to become Keurig Dr Pepper in an $18.7 billion deal.
Gilroy said one of the reasons for the downsizing in Waterbury is because the entire company is moving all of their research and design to Plano, Texas by spring of 2020. Gilroy said the Vermont consolidation will happen gradually throughout the summer.
Keurig Dr Pepper also has offices in Essex, South Burlington, and Williston, which Gilroy said “will not be affected” by the consolidation.
Companies that layoff more than 50 employees are required to warn the state’s Department of Labor of their staffing changes. The DOL was notified in 2016 of 108 layoffs, in 2017 of 40 layoffs, and in 2018 of 118 layoffs — affecting employees at all four locations, most of whom were blue collar workers.
Lindsay Kurrle, commissioner of the DOL, said they can’t quantify the exact impact of layoffs from any particular company, but noted that Vermont’s unemployment rate has been very low in recent months.
“Labor force trends are positive currently,” Kurrle said. “We are reporting job gains in the past six months in our state. We are in a long period of economic expansion and Vermont employers are looking for workers to fill job vacancies. They report they need to fill these positions to either maintain or to grow their business.”
Chris Viens, chair of the Waterbury Selectboard, said he knows lots of people who’ve been laid off from work at Keurig over the years, and he expects he’ll know even more in the coming months.
“Since they came into Waterbury, we’ve had a pretty good run,” Viens said. “Lots of people have gotten pretty wealthy. They have decent wages and decent benefits. But like a lot of businesses, they got too big for their britches.”
He said consolidation is a survival tactic for any business — and he blames Vermont policies including efforts to raise the minimum wage and offer paid family leave for driving businesses out of town.
And as for his friends who were once Keurig employees, Viens said they’ve found other ways to make ends meet.
“They don’t have a choice, right?” he said.
But he noted those other jobs often aren’t as good as what can be found at a big company. Viens mentioned a few people he knows in Waterbury who have struggled to find a full-time job that pays as well as Keurig had.
“There’s a sense of reality when you go from being an employed person working for a big company to self-employed or whatever. It’s a whole different ball game,” Viens said.
