Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, is seeking bankruptcy protection, blaming its pension and medical benefits obligations, increased competition and tough economic conditions…
The privately held company, based in Irving, Texas, said it will be able to maintain routine operations thanks to a $75 million financing commitment from a group of lenders led by Silver Point Capital…
The company said it does not anticipate any disruptions in production or delivery of its breads or cake products and said its popular brands, which also include Drake’s, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, will still be available.
Hostess said it is looking to “create a sustainable cost structure with competitive employee benefit plans.” It also hopes to modernize its systems, fleets and plants to keep pace with customer needs.
“This company has tremendous potential if we can remove the barriers to success,” Driscoll said.
Ever consider that a possible barrier to success might be continuing to produce nothing but crap food?
Good bye pension, insurance coverage, and wages.
I hope I can say it’s true Americans are finally waking up to their disgusting eating habits. No percentage of food consumed should be inedible in my opinion, though reality doesn’t always allow for such situations of lunacy to exist.
What are the odds that production will head offshore?
Why hasn’t Warren Buffet bought this company. Ithas an iconic name, sell all american food (coca cola, mc donalds) and current management has their head up their ass. It seems to me like the type of company he could get cheap and turn around. Alot like Sees Candies.
Bet the top still get the bonuses as the rest get shafted………..
Twinkies – the eternal food.
Wonderbread – wonder why they call it bread.
I regularly eat Hostess Cupcakes. About one third cake every five years: like clockwork. Given they have a shelf life of that same five years, I don’t know why I throw 2/3rds away all the time, should just wrap it and keep it for later?
But–I was thinking this was “only” about shafting the American Working Class for higher profits to the already too rich==but why not moving production off shore? Probably because the human labor to point of sale is quite low given the total automation?
My very first notion though was the calling out of higher/rising healthcare costs: an issue drowned out by the Obama Derangement Syndrome chanting the anti-Obamacare hysteria. Obamacare was passed FOR A REASON: healthcare costs OUT OF CONTROL for the past 20 years. Dumbocrap response: lets do something to control it, Puke response: lets move the business overseas.
Telling. Our politicians, commentators, analysts, public, and voters can’t tell shit from shinola.
Same as it ever was.
Who will come to the rescue of Twinkie the Kid?
I can just imagine the dialogue:
Throws a rope down the well.
Walks away to the tune of staying alive…
lol…the Red Skull says, “…with your powers and my evil brain we can take over the United States…”
After only three years of Obama, Americans cannot even afford Twinkies anymore.
Sad.
On the other hand, maybe caloric restriction due to economic necessity was Obama’s health plan all along?
I blame Michele myself.
Now if only cigarettes we’ren’t addictive.
Additionally, Hostess employees are unionized while most of its competitors aren’t.
[…]
In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Hostess listed about $860 million in debt. The company’s biggest unsecured creditor is the Bakery & Confectionary Union & Industry International Pension Fund, which it owes about $944.2 million.
from http://tinyurl.com/6n3baa5
Like many companies, Hostess is finding it harder to support a growing number of retirees with a smaller number of current employees
[…]
One sticking point for the baker: It pays about $100 million a year into so-called multi-employer pension plans that cover workers at a wide array of companies, the people said. Hostess, whose pension plan is underfunded by about $2 billion, wants to rescind its obligations to that plan and start paying into a plan that only covers its own workers, one of the people said.
They pay into a multi-company fund and they are still $2B short on their own? Sounds like the multi-company fund is a scam.
In 2009 they had 32,000 employees. They now only have 19,000. And they are trying to support other companies, too.
The company grossed $2.8B in 2008 with a net loss of $144M. They are now down to $2B and losing just as much every year.
There are a lot of problems with this company. I don’t think CEO salaries and bonuses are the main contributing factor. Flat/Falling sales and the increased burden of the pension funds are the main ones.
For years the employees were told “Yes, I understand that the salary raise seems low, but you have to look at the total compensation package — your pension, your benefits AND your salary. You are really doing very well.” Having successfully deferred labor expenses by kicking the can down the road, management merrily went on their way. Only now the bills are coming due and you hear “Well, things are tough. We simply can’t afford the pensions and benefits we had hoped to. We never really promised them — if you look down at the fine print at the bottom it says the company retains the right to make changes to the plan at any time. Guess now’s the time, eh sucker?”
And no matter how much the repubs want to say it is the employee’s fault for not somehow privately taking care of their future needs and that they were foolish for believing what the company told them, you know the truth — they are going to be ripped off. The company is stealing from them — is there any other way to look at it?
Now all the wingers will whine “No, no no! You don’t understand — that is the way business works. No one’s to blame here!” I know that is the way business works — I been watching it happen for 30 years as the country embraced all the “free market!” babble (tax cuts for the rich, trickle down, NAFTA, deunionization, out-sourcing, right-sizing, global competitiveness, and all the rest). Given where we are now, it’s obvious IT DOESN’T WORK.
But all we keep hearing from the right is “We need to free the market! Kill regulations. Cut taxes!” We tried it already. It FAILED.
Since when does “doubling down” on a bad idea succeed?
There are winners here — the 1%. Meanwhile, many of the 99% want to believe if we just tweak it a little more, really give the free market a chance you know, things will just wonderfully get better. They BELIEVE. Despite what they see actually happening, despite the facts, they believe. And logic and reason and skillful arguments have never made a dent in a true believer — so here we are. And here we’ll stay.
A major problem with all pensions (including SS) is that it relies on the number of people contributing into it to continue to exceed the number of people extracting from it.
I wouldn’t put all the blame on the business owners. Sometimes the unions don’t care, they just want more and they want it now. Heck, UAW workers get 95% of their base pay if they are laid off (at least they did in the 90s). Why care if the company does well or not? You’ll get paid either way.
Of course, when a strong union forces the company to provide benefits like this, is it the company’s fault for giving them the benefits knowing where it is headed or is it the union’s fault for not listening to management when management told them where it was headed?
Who makes a better Twinkie or Ho-Ho? Where am I gonna find a superior Fruit Pie? And let’s face facts: nobody makes a Sno Ball with pink coconut like Hostess.
(pouting)
You know what is more fun than firing people?
Putting their entire company into bankruptcy!!!
Vote Republican: shove that knife right thru your own throat!!! Do it for your kiddies.
(Nice review there Dr Wally. Why can’t people, even the people directly suffering the direct consequences see that Republican Economics DOESN’T WORK!!!!)
Silly Hoomans.
Twinkie ingredients:
Enriched wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, niacin, water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and/or animal shortening – containing one or more of partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed and canola oil, and beef fat, dextrose, whole eggs, modified corn starch, cellulose gum, whey, leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), salt, cornstarch, corn flour, corn syrup, solids, mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, dextrin, calcium caseinate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, wheat gluten, calcium sulphate, natural and artificial flavours, caramel colour, yellow #5, red #40.
This cannot be good for you.
You actually bought some Twinkies™…
That is dedication, and a toxic waste of your money.
I googled the ingredients for twinkies.
Recipe for Ho Ho Pudding
Items Needed:
1 box of Ho Hos
2 pkgs chocolate pudding mix
4 cups milk
1 large tub whipped topping
DIRECTIONS:
Cut Ho Hos into circles, saving 1 Ho Ho.
Mix pudding and milk according to package pudding directions and chill until thick.
In large glass bowl, layer Ho Hos, pudding and whipped topping. Ending with whipped topping.
Take remaining Ho Ho and slice in circles and place on top. Keep refrigerated until ready to eat.
But somehow those formerly-employed peons will keep coming up with enough change to buy the lifeless crap they frittered away their lives producing for the benefit of the 1%.
Oh, America. You once had SUCH potential…….
If only they would legalize marijuana, the munchies could save this company.
I have MS and I would be able to get some medicinal MJ but no amount of MUnchies would get me to eat that crap.
Stick a fork in them (but wash it quickly and carefully because it’ll eat through stainless steel tines,) they’re done.
Twinkies Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection
Wonder Bread Cookbook: An Inventive and Unexpected Recipe Collection
As part of Wonder Bread’s eighty-fifth anniversary celebration, Wonder put out a call for recipes, asking people to share their ideas for making more than simply sandwiches with America’s favorite brand of white bread. Fans responded with an outpouring of recipes featuring the famously soft loaf. Nearly fifty of these wonderful creations are presented in this colorful collection alongside vintage recipes cooked up for the Wonder bakery at the 1934 World’s Fair and other events. With an introduction to Wonder history and a sampling of Wonder’s wackier ad campaigns, The Wonder Bread Cookbook is a nostalgic slice of goodness for the Wonder lover in all of us.
I think a bail out is in order. Save the company with a big military contract. Even MREs expire but Twinkies just go on forever! Cupcakes have even more calories than MRE stew and weigh a lot less for the soldier to carry. Of course, with all the sugar, the soldiers might get hyper and start pissing on the enemy… oh, wait!
Well, another great model of an institutionalize American business. Blame the failure on the high cost of labor, and not on management incompetence,- which is part of the high cost of labor – cutting corners, and the neglect of product quality, all add up to a success American business who can go bankrupt as a strategy to make more money for those VIPs in the company. Money, Money, Money, as Pink Floyd would say.
So, what is your solution for ensuring these companies continue to get their pensions?
It’s easy to blame management for pissing away all the money but it’s really hard to admit that those workers put their faith in the wrong people.
I blame both.
Oh, come on you new age hippies! There’s nothing wrong with eating the occasional Twinkie. Not a health food, to be sure, no worse than lots of other things out there. I eat one about once every six months, and enjoy the hell out of it. But I’m not going to glam down 14 a week.
The problem is eating them (or McDonalds or KFC or Coca-Cola or rib eye steak or baked potatoes or whole wheat tofu with alfalfa sprouts and olive oil on it for that matter) to excess.
Twinikes are a unique American product and are as Archie Bunker put it, “white soul food”.
The Hostess company’s problems stem more from the short sighted management problems so pervasive in American business, including but not limited to, promising future benefits that they had no idea how to pay for.
Did you get the first and second items list?
• pension and
• medical benefits obligations
Nixon and Reagan were just kicking the problems down the road by making the deal with Humana.
The problems have rolled as far as they can.
I got it. I wonder if they can outsource twinkies?
Ever consider that a possible barrier to success might be continuing to produce nothing but crap food?
…Or the fact that every time any large company (not just Hostess – who makes Twinkies and Wonder Bread) shows a profit that it almost never goes back into the company infrastructure?
I swear! It’s like being on board the S.S. Titanic and not paying attention to that big thud. It’s dismissed as “business as usual” where even the first class passengers don’t help – or especially!
The consensus seems to be to let them sink if they are so arrogant, blind or stupid as to not make any (non life threatening) personal sacrifices. Who cares about one tiny little boat or a company that produces nothing but “crap food”? I don’t know about you, but everything I eat just turns to “crap” anyway. Right?
It’s not like China or even a third world country won’t fill the need for “crap”. And it’s not like Americans or anyone else will stop consuming “crap” either. Right?!
(Ever wonder why “right” is usually a question and “left” is usually a statement? It’s a lot like asking for someone’s money or telling them to hand it over.)
The Greeks seem to be in danger of being unable to consume aspirin because or bad choices. Parents are abandoning children. I’d say we could end up learning how to go hungry in fact many claim as much as 1/5th of the population is but that seems more than a little high.
And children, historians that day marked the second bankruptcy procedure of The Hostess Corporation as the beginning of the downfall of the human race into abject poverty and starvation.
It was because of this single event that the dominant human life form began to decline and allow ant society to flourish.
Now dwindled down to a few feral animals they eek out the existence in caves and small growth forests. But be careful if you encounter any as they can spread diseases.
-No. 780,512,000,010,506, Ant Historian
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Hostess ® Ding Dongs ®
Ding Dongs – enrobed with chocolate coating, with rich and majestic crème filling, you can’t help but feel like royalty when you bite into one. In fact, when they were first introduced, they were actually called King Dons in some parts of the country (and Big Wheels in some regions),
The name Ding Dong came from the chiming bells used in Hostess’ first television commercials and you’ll be singing a happy tune every time you polish off a package. Nibble them slowly, like a king or queen, and savor the creamy goodness of every morsel, or bite right into that creamy center and get a mouthful of chocolate goodness.
A Ding Dong Ditch, as defined by Wikipedia, involves knocking on the front door (or ringing the doorbell of) a victim, then running away before the door can be answered. The game goes by many different names in various other countries and has been played since the 19th century.
Ding Dong Ditch? We always called it Nigger Knockin’
Here in Joyzee we have a loud curse which I heard yet again last night.
The “‘Rican doorbell” which consists of at least one microcephalic, semi-simian, little fuckin’ greasy [expletive deleted, {and I write fuck with impunity, alacrity and delight so you know its some pretty bad language,}] who leans on the fuckin’ horn at two o’ fuckin’ clock in the fuckin’ morning so his [expletive deleted] purulent, pustule covered friend can come out to his fuckin’ junker and get in.
I swear if they allowed concealed carry in Joyzee, or let me snipe from my balcony, he wouldn’t be pulling away from any fuckin’ curb.
I’d be throwing that now quiet sack of shit into a dumpster and giving a .50 caliber bullet riddled hunk o’ junk to a scrap dealer.
That car is such a scabrous slag heap, so desperately in need of an exhaust system, that it drowns out the a garbage truck as its making its rounds.
Lazy shits can’t get out of their pos to knock on a door like a f’in human. I feel you pain msbpod.
I was once a wayward boy who like you did the ring and run. My version included a brown paper bag with dog shit in it lit on fire. We’d hide in the shrubs and watch. Adrenaline junkie.
When I had my own home the friendly neighborhood kiddies pulled the same stunt on me. I guess it’s true, what goes around comes around. I had a good laugh while the wife was concerned about the small flames on our porch.
I was once a wayward boy who like you did the ring and run.
Then I took a bullet to the knee and now I am a police officer.
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About once every month or two, when they’re on sale at my local market, I buy a Hostess snack. I like the little chocolate donuts, the honey buns, HoHos and DingDongs. About once a year I’ll get some Twinkies or chocolate cupcakes. And I have to say, Hostess snacks (and Wonder Bread) may be crap, but at least they’re better than the Little Debbie crap
When I was a kid, these cost a dime. Now I only buy one when they come down from $1.49 to $1.00 apiece. I guess that makes me a geezer, but it also illustrates one of the top favorite geezer themes: inflation is theft! Lazy, undisciplined fiscal policies, kicking the can down the road, etc. all tend to devalue the currency over time. And all the political parties, industry, labor, the financial sector, etc. are all equally at fault.
It’s too big to fail. It’s part of the fabric of Americana. We should beg chairman Obama to bail this company out! http://tinyurl.com/266aksn
A typical theme in today’s labor unions. Companies are now saying they cannot afford them and are trying to get out of those pension commitments. Its a sign of the times.
“A man’s gotta have his twinkies”
“Mark my words, this twinkie thing ain’t over”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7BdXZPcE3eA
I’m skeptical that the company’s problems stem solely from union wages and benefits. The unions gave back significant wages and benefits so Interstate Bakeries (which became Hostess Brands) could exit bankruptcy in 2007 and they are still being paid according to the terms of those contracts. Now Hostess claims the wage and benefits package is too rich for their blood and they need to again cut both so they can stay afloat. Hostess has faced a huge problem for more than a decade, that being they produce a line of products that Americans desire less and less as time goes on, their products are perceived to be ‘junk food’ and when they try to price those products higher to reflect rising costs their revenue drops as people will pay for cheap junk, but they will not pay for expensive junk. I don’t see a way out for Hostess. Their debt load is very high, their facilities and equipment are outdated and desperately need to be replaced which can’t happen under the debt load…the problems go on and on. Stock up on your favorite snacks folks, in my opinion, this will not end well for Hostess.