Governor Of California PANICS As Frito Lay Begins Shutting Down Plants

The Fredolay manufacturing plant in

Rancho Cukamonga is closing after more

than 50 years in business.

>> I don't know how folks are going to make

up for this. Those jobs were full-time,

year round jobs.

>> Have the decency not to threaten people

as they go to school.

>> A 50-year-old Frito lay plant just goes

dark, leaving 500 workers clueless

overnight. And the governor of

California freezes as the shutdowns

begin. This is panic disguised as

silence while California's real jobs

collapse in real time. If this moment

doesn't set off alarms right now, the

next closures won't wait for permission.

>> As it plans to close its Fredo Lelay

plant

>> plant, a factory in Rancho Cucamonga

that ran for more than 50 years just

went dark. The machine stopped. The line

workers clocked out for the last time

and nearly 480 jobs disappeared without

a single announcement. Sacramento says

almost nothing. And that's what makes

this moment unsettling. Because when a

plant that fed families for decades

shuts its doors this quietly, it's not a

one-off, it's a warning sign. And

California seems determined to look the

other way.

>> Pepsi says the closure is driven by

business needs. The company says it will

provide transition assistance, [music]

career support, and benefits to

employees who are impacted. This wasn't

some obscure factory making parts no

one's heard of. This was a Fredo lay

manufacturing plant producing Doritos,

Cheetos, funions, and Tostitos. Snacks

found in nearly every grocery store in

America. Products that sell in good

times and bad times. If a facility like

this can no longer survive in

California, then something deeper is

breaking underneath the surface. Parent

company PepsiCo Food says manufacturing

at the plant has stopped, but warehouse,

distribution, and transportation will

still be operational. The announcement

means hundreds of workers will be laid

off. Several employees tell KTLA they

were given 10 weeks of severance pay,

but were not given an opportunity to

transfer. The shutdown happened in June

2025.

Manufacturing ended completely. Over

half a century of continuous production

just stopped. What remains at the site

is telling warehouse operations,

distribution, fleet, transportation. The

physical shell still exists, but the

heart is gone. This is how industrial

exits actually happen. First, the

production lines vanish. Then, the rest

slowly follows. It's never announced as

a collapse. It's presented as a

transition, and the human cost gets

buried in that word. Around 480

manufacturing workers were laid off.

Many of them weren't new hires. These

were long-term employees. People who

built entire lives around that plant.

Families where the job passed from one

generation to the next. When those jobs

vanish, severance checks don't replace

what's lost. Benefits run out. Stability

disappears. And the local economy

absorbs the hit quietly. one closed shop

and one missed rent payment at a time.

>> PepsiCo Fredo Lelay has announced the

closure of their Liberty food processing

plant in a statement that they released.

Quote, PepsiCo Foods US announced the

closure of their facility in Liberty,

New York.

>> PepsiCo says this was about

restructuring, rising costs, and weaker

consumer demand. That language sounds

clean, but the reality isn't. PepsiCo

still runs more than 30 Fredolay plants

across the United States. This wasn't

about chips not selling. It was about

where it's cheaper and easier to

operate. California didn't lose demand.

It lost priority. What makes this

shutdown even more disturbing is how it

slipped past the system that's supposed

to protect workers. California's Warren

Act exists to make large layoffs

visible. It's meant to alert employees,

local governments, and communities so

they can prepare. But this closure never

appeared in warrant filings. 480 layoffs

off the radar.

>> I don't know how folks are going to make

up for this. Those jobs were full-time,

yearround jobs that offered stability.

>> That raises a serious question. If a

shutdown of this size can happen without

formal notice, how many others are

happening the same way? How many

communities are being hit before anyone

officially counts them? This isn't about

paperwork mistakes. It's about a system

that only works when companies choose to

fully engage with it. And then there's

the governor.

This silence matters because

manufacturing jobs are different. They

anchor regions. They support entire

ecosystems of small businesses,

suppliers, and service workers. When one

goes down, the damage spreads far beyond

the plant gates. California likes to

talk about innovation and green

transitions, but this shutdown exposes a

hard truth. Not every worker can simply

pivot into a new economy overnight, and

many are never invited into the

conversation at all.

>> I don't even know how many people are

going to be out of work here. You know,

that's going to be a real important

thing. And and how many people are here

in Liberty? How many people reside here

in Liberty? because this could have uh

you know this this is one of those

things that could have a a profound

effect uh throughout the community.

>> What's happening in Rancho Cucamonga

fits into a larger pattern across the

food sector. Factories are closing as

companies respond to tighter consumer

spending and economic volatility.

Food manufacturing used to be considered

resilient. Now even that safety net is

thinning. And when food plants start

leaving, it signals a deeper instability

that doesn't show up in stock tickers.

The most unsettling part isn't that this

plant closed. It's how normal it's being

treated. No outrage, no urgency, just

another line item in a corporate

strategy deck. But for the families

affected, this wasn't a strategy. It was

a shock that hit all at once. Now,

here's where the story really gets

interesting because once you step past

the press releases, things start

sounding very different. We will be

assisting the impacted workers in every

way we can, including by providing

needed services to individuals and

families and offering the full support

of our center for workforce development

in keeping our residents locally

employed.

>> PepsiCo's explanation is neat, tidy, and

perfectly laminated. Restructuring and

weakened consumer demand. These are the

kinds of phrases that look great in

boardrooms and investor calls. They

slide off the tongue smoothly like

nothing painful happened. But let's

translate that out of corporate English

and into normal human language. What it

really means is this. The math still

worked, just not in California's favor.

Profits needed protecting. Expenses

needed trimming. And workers were the

easiest line to erase.

>> I'm confident that the community will

rally and uh we'll figure out a way to

deal [music] with this situation.

>> That doesn't mean severance and benefits

don't matter. They do. A severance check

can keep the lights on for a while.

Benefits soften the fall. But let's not

pretend they replace a stable job that

paid the mortgage, funded college

savings, and gave people a reason to

believe next year would look like last

year. Severance is a bandage. A career

is a backbone, and one doesn't replace

the other. Now, let's talk about the

silence from the top because it's

impossible to ignore. As of now, there's

still no verified public statement from