Farewell, Hostess . . .


Just_A_Guy
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I've seen this coming for quite some time. When I worked retail 4 years ago, our Hostess reps said they worked day to day not knowing if they would have a job the next day. Hostess had already been through several bankruptcy filings.

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I will never understand how Hostess would even file for bankruptcy with such products like "Twinkies" and "Zingers".

Every kids has easily eaten, well almost every kid, 20 lbs. of twinkies. I couldn't get enough of those when I was younger, especially the vanilla frosted zingers.

You know our economy is bad when Twinkies and Zingers do not keep a company a float.

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I'll miss the chocolate coated yellow cake donettes. There's a Hostess outlet about 10 minutes from my house...I wonder if they'll freeze?

I would think they would. Two of the hostess outlets stores in my area closed ages and ages ago. That's where I always went to stock up.

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I'll miss the chocolate coated yellow cake donettes. There's a Hostess outlet about 10 minutes from my house...I wonder if they'll freeze?

The chocolate wax donettes? I liked those for a while. The powdered ones are good, but the powder gets all over your clothes when you eat them. About all I eat nowadays are the pies.

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Don't know too much about the history here, but it sounds as if both parties were a bit stubborn.

Not true.

If you look at the history of the company since DPF bought out the then-smaller bread company in the mid 70's, you can kinda see a "got too big for its breeches" effect there. These guys are technology people who had no experience in the food industry. So, they basically looked at bread as a logistic enterprise... they bought out several other smallish bread companies (including Hostess) and combined them into a giant conglomerate.

That's fine and good. Except, they couldn't maintain the integrity of the food products they were purchasing. They wanted to make them into one company but still maintain its existing consumer base... it gets tricky when you are dealing with food. Because, just one change in the production process can alter the flavor of the end product - which is what happened - so they couldn't really combine all these diverse production systems to make them run more efficiently. So, when the Anti-Carbs era happened, they did not have enough cushioning to adjust to the new market... which caused the bankruptcy in 2004.

Now, they restructured, injected more money into the company through venture capitalists... but they still had to pay out existing pension plans and all these unsustainable obligations they had with their employees. This became a noose over the company's neck (this is so very common that it's not really a surprise anymore) and, like all other companies that can't get an agreement with their unions, they eventually collapsed because you can't adjust to the market with a noose around your neck.

The Baker's Union, of course, thought that if they just change management that the company will profit without having to renege on their employee benefits. Well, unfortunately, even if you change management here, it will not happen - because, a change in management requires flexibility in assets to turn a company around.

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I'm of the opinion that Twinkies, like PopTarts, were all made sometime in the spring of summer of 1962 as emergency supplies in case of nuclear war. They were stockpiled in government warehouses and have been sold to an unsuspecting populace ever since.

Isn't there more preservatives in those things than food product? ICK!

-RM

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The twinkies are NOTHING like the ones when I was a kid. The filling is just grease and not tasty at all.

Anyway, was talking to a guy in Canada and they are still going to be in operation there. Apparently they are only going bankrupt in the states and yes they have good unions in Canada.

Kinda slammed that argument. Oh and thing about the teamsters is they are the posterboard for Unions Gone Bad, while the smaller union is a good one. In fact I know/met the president of that one. He worked with my parents when they held offices in the Grain Millers Union. He is not stupid. The CEO did good on the deal by the way. 3.5 million for not working out an agreement. Not bad.

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That $3.5 million would have given each Hostess employee $194 in severance. Wouldn't have saved the company, and I'll bet dollars to donuts (pardon the pun) it wouldn't even have ended the strike.

Yeah, the CEO didn't do bad for himself - but he'd have done a heckuvalot better if he could have collected another $3.5 million from Hostess next year, which of course is no longer an option.

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With such "goodwill" in their products... I foresee a restructuring of Hostess with a huge difference in the future: no unions.

I say that because of this in the article: "But even if those brands are bought and restarted, the Hostess workers will not get their jobs back."

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