Laid off from Central Garden & Pet.

What Central Garden & Pet layoffs have meant for employees

The Henrico plant came to Central through a purchase. Central bought TDBBS, the business behind Best Bully Sticks, in 2023 to grow in dog treats and online sales, and in April 2026 its spokesperson called moving that work into the existing Dog & Cat Business Unit "a natural next step," according to Richmond BizSense. Production was shifting to New Jersey, Virginia Business reported. For anyone at one of the businesses Central has bought, Henrico is one example of a purchase followed by a move into a longer-standing Central operation.

Central's two distribution consolidations show where the work was headed. Its fiscal 2024 10-K describes the garden segment starting to merge four Southeast distribution locations into one new facility, while the fiscal 2025 10-K records the consolidation of two distribution facilities the filing itself calls legacy, one in Ontario, California and an older one in Salt Lake City, into a new Utah building. In both, the work was to stay inside Central and move to a newer building, so the jobs at stake were the ones at the older addresses.

A notice to the state hasn't always come far ahead of a Central closing. Maryland's 2025 WARN log dates Bell Nursery's Elkridge notice the day before that site closed, while the Marydel notice went in during early October with a late-November effective date. Central's April 14 letter on Henrico allowed the wind-down to begin the week it went out and to finish no earlier than June 30, by Richmond BizSense's account. If you work at a Central site, consider keeping copies of your pay stubs and performance reviews somewhere you can still reach after your last day.

Severance has been part of how Central closes a site, both in its own accounting, where the fiscal 2024 and 2025 10-Ks count severance among closing costs, and in the reporting on Henrico. That held for pet and garden sites alike and for the 2025 United Kingdom wind-down. Even the 2023 sale of its independent garden center distribution business carried facility closure costs that included severance, Central's fiscal 2023 results release said. Anyone weighing a Central package can find which terms tend to be negotiable in negotiating a severance agreement, and how COBRA works covers who can keep workplace health coverage once employment ends and at what cost.

Central's full-time headcount fell by about 400 over fiscal 2025, a net change that counts new hires as well as departures of every kind, not only closings. The closing costs kept coming in fiscal 2026. Central booked money in the six months through March 28, 2026 for shutting a sales and logistics facility in Pennsylvania, and for the three months through June 27, 2026 it recorded $13.0 million in its pet segment to exit a minor business and close two facilities, its third-quarter fiscal 2026 10-Q says, without naming either site. Its garden segment was still booking costs that year for three distribution centers it had closed in fiscal 2024 and 2025.

Since 2023, the WARN notices tied to Central have come from Virginia, Maryland, California and Texas, our WARN tracker shows, and Bell Nursery's two Maryland notices went in under the unit's own name, Bell Nursery USA, LLC, which Central's Exhibit 21 names among its subsidiaries. Those notices give the unit's street addresses, 7111 Troy Hill Drive in Elkridge and 2509 Busic Church Road in Marydel. Anyone let go at one of these sites can find each state's claim rules on the unemployment pages for Virginia, Maryland, California and Texas.