Ruiz Foods Cuts 176 Jobs in Its California Hometown

Ruiz Foods will cut 176 jobs at its Dinuba, California, plant on November 4 and switch the line to a Monday-through-Friday week. The El Monterey maker employs about 1,400 people at 501 S. Alta Ave., in a city Census Bureau figures show Dinuba counted 25,949 residents as of July 2025.

The company says the cuts match expected customer demand. They also put this hometown plant on the same five-day clock as the rest of a network now run from Frisco, Texas.

176 Jobs Leave the Dinuba Line

Workers got notice on September 2. Senior Vice President of Administration Tony Caetano told California’s Employment Development Department the plant will keep running, and he put the full reduction at 176 jobs in Tulare County.

THE WARN COUNT

Caetano wrote that the six people already gone did not get the 60-day warning California requires “due to the sensitivity of their roles,” and that they still received the required pay and benefits. The 170 who remain on the notice got 63 days, from September 2 to November 4.

President and CEO Kimberli Carroll called the move hard and tied it to output.

This difficult decision impacts valued members of our team and is necessary to better align production capacity with anticipated customer demand.

Kimberli Carroll, president and CEO, Ruiz Foods

The company still calls Dinuba a critical plant and says planned capital spending on the site will go ahead. Eligible people can seek open jobs at other Ruiz plants, and an Early Retirement Incentive Plan offers richer separation pay to those who qualify.

The Plant Goes to Weekdays Only

On the same November morning, Dinuba moves to a five-day production week. The company says the new calendar will match how much it needs to make, line up with other Ruiz plants, and give remaining crews weekends off.

That last point is the trade. A plant that ran around the clock in a farm town is dropping the weekend shifts that made it a year-round paycheck. People who stay get Saturday and Sunday. People whose jobs were built on those extra days are the ones coming off the board.

Cheap frozen burritos did not suddenly fall out of grocery cases. In a May 2026 interview, Carroll said the frozen aisle has been compressed over the last couple of years, traffic in convenience stores is down, and club and dollar stores are the channels holding up. The weekday clock is how a maker trims weekend output without shutting the flagship building.

Dinuba Lists Ruiz Foods as Its Largest Employer

Dinuba is a Tulare County city of about six and a half square miles, with a median household income of $59,484 and a poverty rate of 26.8 percent. Hispanic or Latino residents make up 87.4 percent of the population. The plant is not a side account in that town. It is the payroll.

THE DINUBA SNAPSHOT

• Population: 25,949 as of July 1, 2025, up from 24,563 in the 2020 census.
• Poverty rate: 26.8 percent of residents.
• Median household income: $59,484 in 2024 dollars.
• Top private payroll: Ruiz Foods at 1,400 jobs in the city’s 2025 financial report.

That report puts the plant at 38 percent of city employment, ahead of Dinuba Public Schools at 753 jobs, a Best Buy distribution center at 491, and Walmart at 430. After November 4 the headcount will be lower, and the plant is still set to remain the largest employer in town.

Longtime resident Robert Serna told local television the site has been the rare steady job in a place built on harvest calendars.

Well, this town is seasonal jobs, and that place has always been like a constant, you know what I mean? The place is 24 hours and is always going. So there’s going to be a competition for seasonal jobs.

Robert Serna, Dinuba resident

A transfer offer does not solve that bind for most of the 176. The other plants are in Vernon, California, Denison, Texas, and Florence, South Carolina, plus a main office in Frisco. That is not a short drive down Alta Avenue.

Frisco Got the Headquarters in 2024

Louis and Fred Ruiz started the company in 1964 in a Tulare County warehouse, working from family recipes. The first plant the company built for itself opened in Dinuba in 1990. For most of the next three decades, the town was both factory floor and head office.

That ended in stages. Ruiz named Frisco a regional headquarters in May 2022, then decided in 2023 to make it the only one. The new office occupies 25,000 square feet in Hall Park and was sized for about 125 seats. A ribbon cutting with the Frisco Chamber of Commerce was held on March 6, 2024.

The board selected Kimberli Carroll as chief executive effective January 21, 2024, after she had served as chief operating officer. Owner-director Kim Ruiz Beck said Carroll had spent two decades inside the company, starting in marketing. Former CEO Dan Antonelli moved to executive board chair.

Carroll has been blunt about why the main office left the Valley. Talent was the point she kept coming back to.

It’s really challenging to do that in a small town in the Central Valley of California. The Dallas Metroplex is a different story.

Kimberli Carroll, president and CEO, in a May 2026 interview

She also said the Dallas-Fort Worth airport puts plants and customers within half a day, and that some equipment suppliers sit nearby. She added that the move does not take anything away from the California crews who built the company over 60 years. The 176 jobs coming off Alta Avenue are the test of that sentence.

Tulare’s 215 Jobs Already Left the County

Dinuba is the second Central Valley production cut under Carroll, not the first. On May 29, 2024, the company said from Frisco that it would retire the Tulare plant in 2024. That building opened in 2004 as a short-term overflow from Dinuba. After 20 years, Ruiz said it was too small and would have needed heavy new spending to stay useful.

The Tulare line closed between August 30 and September 13, 2024. It had 215 jobs at full stretch. Some people were offered a move to Dinuba, which is now the plant trimming its own roster.

Add the two California production rounds and the figure is 391 jobs. That is not a company shutdown. It is a two-year narrowing of the county that raised the brand.

FROM FRISCO TO THE WARN LETTER

1. May 2022: Ruiz sets up a headquarters in Frisco, Texas.
2. January 21, 2024: Kimberli Carroll becomes president and CEO.
3. March 6, 2024: The Frisco office holds its grand opening.
4. May 29, 2024: The company announces it will close the Tulare plant.
5. August 30 to September 13, 2024: Tulare stops production, affecting 215 jobs.
6. September 2, 2026: Dinuba workers receive WARN notices for 176 jobs.
7. November 4, 2026: 170 remaining cuts take effect and the five-day week begins.

In 2023, then-CEO Dan Antonelli still described Dinuba as the flagship site, with more than 1,600 team members. The plant now employs about 1,400. Some of that gap is the head-office move. The rest is a smaller production floor in the town that used to house both.

Vernon, Denison and Florence Already Run Five Days

Ruiz is a privately held maker of frozen burritos, taquitos, enchiladas, chimichangas, and breakfast items under El Monterey, plus the Tornados roller-grill line sold into convenience stores. The company says El Monterey is the top-selling frozen Mexican food in the United States. It employs more than 4,000 people.

After Tulare, four plants remain. The weekday shift in Dinuba is the last of those four coming onto the same clock.

THE REST OF THE NETWORK

• Dinuba, California: Flagship plant at 501 S. Alta Ave., about 1,400 jobs before the November cut, opening in 1990.
• Vernon, California: Los Angeles-area plant; in 2023 the company announced 150,000 square feet of added space, with the first new line due in the first half of fiscal 2025.
• Denison, Texas: Plant and distribution site acquired in 2005, the first factory outside California.
• Florence, South Carolina: East Coast plant acquired in 2014.
• Frisco, Texas: Main office of 25,000 square feet, sized for about 125 seats.

Carroll, then chief operating officer, said in 2023 that the Vernon expansion would add West Coast capacity for El Monterey and Tornados. Southern California got more floor space. Tulare County is getting a shorter week and a smaller headcount. The company can say both things at once because the network is no longer centered on Dinuba.

National talk about this layoff has treated 176 jobs as a footnote to the Texas move, or as too small to matter against a workforce above 4,000. Inside Dinuba the math is different. This is the largest employer in a city of 25,949 people, and the weekend shifts were the part of the job that did not follow the harvest.

What Severance and Transfers the Company Offered

Ruiz is not closing the Alta Avenue plant, and the WARN letter says operations continue. The package around the 176 jobs is the part that is finished even before November 4.

WHAT WORKERS WERE OFFERED

• Severance pay: Separation pay based on years of service.
• Health coverage: COBRA continuation coverage.
• Unemployment help: Information on how to claim state benefits.
• Early retirement: An incentive plan with enhanced separation benefits for eligible staff who choose to retire.
• Other plants: A chance to apply for open jobs at other Ruiz manufacturing sites.

Those other sites are the ones already on a five-day week. A worker who takes a job in Denison or Florence leaves Tulare County. A worker who stays in Dinuba and loses a weekend crew job is back in the seasonal market Serna described, competing with harvest labor for whatever is open.

On November 4, 170 more people leave the Alta Avenue plant, and the crews who remain start a weekday-only week. The building stays. The 24-hour clock does not.