Dive Brief:
- Heinz is trying to sublease some 45,700 square feet of the 150,000 square feet it rents for use as the Heinz Innovation Center in Pittsburgh.
- The ketchup company said it's not abandoning the facility, where it has conducted research since 2004, but is downsizing and moving to an open-office environment.
- The move follows a similar one in August when the company offered 276,705 square feet of its corporate headquarters for sublease.
Dive Insight:
Heinz is looking to cut costs. We get that. And no doubt the recent layoffs and downsizing make sense on a spreadsheet. But as we've noted before, Heinz seems to be engaged in a sort of frenzied, cost-cutting that seems petty. There's an aura of desperation about the cutbacks that feels out of line. Our concern is that the cuts are becoming a public-relations problem and an employee morale problem.