With consumers feeling economic headwinds and gross margins shrinking from tariffs, companies in the outdoor cooking space are strategizing how to preserve earnings. They’re looking to the only place they can to shrink, operating expense, which means reducing headcount.

Ooni

Ooni has been going through some changes as a company. Just this week they announced that they’ve appointed their first non-founder CEO. They’ve seen their sales decline, and with the US being their number one market, they have to be feeling the impacts of tariffs.

They performed job cuts of 75 people last year, and it appears that they just did another round of layoffs. Quite a few Ooni employees have posted on LinkedIn and other forums that Ooni performed a round of layoffs and their roles were impacted within the past week. One post suggested as many as 20% of roles eliminated.

Most of the posts we’ve seen have been from recently terminated employees in marketing. Sales and marketing are two areas that companies traditionally look to cut first when they’re trying to reduce costs. They aren’t essential to keeping the lights on, which is where some companies start from in tough times.

Traeger

Once high tariffs became a likelihood, Traeger developed a strategy to preserve earnings. They’ve already done many of the Phase 1 activities, with a more broad-based review of their business occurring in Phase 2.

Overall, based on the current tariff regime, we expect the unmitigated impact of tariffs to be approximately $60 million in fiscal 2025. We believe that our mitigation efforts will allow us to offset approximately 80% of this impact during the fiscal year.

Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger – Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Part of the initial phase was a reduction in force, which they implemented in the second quarter.

The first phase consists of actions already taken or underway. This includes the very difficult decision to implement a reduction in force in the second quarter. Parting ways with many very talented and dedicated team members was not taken lightly, however, it was the right thing to do for our business.

Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger – Q2 2025 Earnings Call

They noted in their second quarter earnings call that there would be more employees impacted by the consolidation of MEATER to their facility in Utah.

Over the past week we’ve also seen on LinkedIn a couple leaders in sales and marketing parting ways with the company, and writing positive messages about their time with Traeger. They appear to have other external roles lined-up, but it’s worth noting the departures which could be tied to Traeger’s broader change in strategy.