Food giant Frito-Lay — maker of the popular snacks Cheetos, Doritos and Lay’s potato chips — announced Tuesday it will shutter two of its manufacturing and warehouse facilities in Orlando, eliminating 500 jobs.

In a letter to the state’s Department of Commerce, the company said it planned to terminate 454 positions this week at its facility off Silver Star Road.

The positions include mechanics, packagers, machine operators, handlers, managers, maintenance workers and the plant’s director, wrote Bonny Bourque of Frito-Lay’s Southeast Division.

The affected employees have been told they will be provided with 60 days of severance pay, according to the letter.

In a separate letter on Tuesday to the state, Bourque said the company also will stop its operations at its smaller facility at 2000 Parks Oaks Ave. by May 9 and eliminate 46 jobs. Those positions include handlers, supervisors, and warehouse workers.

Based in Plano, Texas, Frito-Lay is part of PepsiCo Foods and has nearly three dozen manufacturing plants across the country and Canada. It employs about 60,000 people in total.

In a statement released Tuesday, PepsiCo called the closing of the Orlando facilities “a difficult decision” and said it was driven by “business needs” as consumers begin to cut back on spending and seek healthier snacks.

“We know how much this site and its people mean to the Orlando community,” the statement said. “We are committed to treating every impacted employee with care — providing transition assistance, career support, and pay and benefits during this time.”

In June, the company sold off nearly 47 acres of its total Orlando properties — including a 72,000-square-foot warehouse at 998 N. John Young Parkway, about two miles south of the Silver Star Road. The company continues to operate that facility, which sits about a mile and a half from the Silver Star plant, as a tenant.

That same month, Frito-Lay announced it was closing a manufacturing plant in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., after 50 years of operation, according to RetailWire.

The layoffs were not unexpected, at least to those reading company documents.

PepsiCo said in an October report that it was taking “actions to right size operating costs.” It went on to note “our Frito-Lay U.S. business has already reduced its full-time headcount by approximately 7 percent year to date with more reductions expected before year end.”

In July, PepsiCo reported in its fiscal report that second-quarter revenue for its North American foods businesses, including Frito-Lay, climbed 1% from 2024 to $6.48 billion.

But this fall analysts said the company’s snack sales were mostly flat.

A recent report about PepsiCo by RBC Capital Markets noted that Frito-Lay has increased prices, particularly on its family-size bags of chips, creating affordability challenges for its low-income consumers. At the same time, the company’s sales of salty snacks have dragged as consumers look for healthy options, including minimally processed foods with less sodium and more protein.

Frito-Lay was launched in San Antonio, Texas in 1932, when Charles Doolin started making chips in his kitchen and called them Fritos, selling them in wax-paper bags for a nickel. In the early 1960s, the company teamed with H.W. Lay & Co. In 1965, it merged with PepsiCo.

That same year, Frito-Lay began production in Orlando.

Originally, the chips were made with potatoes, oil and salt, but the company changed its ingredients over the years. More recently, Frito-Lay removed many of artificial flavors and colors from its products and also introduced baked and multi-grain chips to satisfy consumers’ demands for more nutritious snacks.

Today, the company also manufactures and sells Tostitos tortilla chips and Sun Chips multi-grain snacks.