Et tu, Twinkie?

Yes, it’s true. The Hostess Twinkie is back. And how it got there is a heartwarming story.

The cream filled sponge cake with an 83- year history has survived the double bankruptcy of its corporate parent, which ended up amassing some $1.3 billion in debt. But there is now a new owner on the block. C. Dean Metropoulos, a 67-year old entrepreneur based in Kansas City, Missouri, who has been involved in some 78 brand acquisitions over the past quarter century, paid over $400 million for the brand and has ambitious plans to earn a return on his investment.

According to Mr. Metropoulos, the new Hostess company will focus on innovation, efficiency and getting more Twinkies in more places. His goal is as noble as it is simple: “wherever you find a Snickers Bar or M&M’s, you should be able to find a Twinkie,” he says. And how is he going to do this?

First and foremost, he is going to free the Twinkie from the yoke of union labour. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Twinkie struggled under a distribution system in which there were some 6,000 drivers, all, can you believe it, with union wages and pension benefits! The system was also burdened by an agreement that required drivers, to deliver bread and cakes on separate trucks. As a result, the Twinkie only reached the shelves of some 50,000 of 150,000 U.S. convenience stores, leaving “some pockets of the country entirely without Twinkies.” Yes, that last statement shocked me too.

So the use of non-unionized labour will enable him to get his product to more warehouses, so that he can quickly double his outreach to convenience stores, and start attracting sales at dollar stores, drug stores and vending machines, from all of which the Twinkie has been heretofore shutout. And it will also enable him to automate and improve plant capacity while eliminating weaker selling products like jelly doughnuts.

The former company had some 19,000 employees, but he is planning to ramp up to a limit of about 1,800, some “being paid significantly less than they were before the bankruptcy.”

The debt of the old bankrupt company also prevented it from investing in product innovation and marketing. With lower overhead, Mr. Metropoulos says there is now “no question we want to innovate around flavours and textures.” I can hardly wait for that: perhaps he will hook the Twinkie up with the R and D people at Muppet Labs.

So who will buy the reconstituted Twinkie? Surely not those more than 17,000 employees who lost their jobs, or many of the current 1,800 employees earning thinner wage packets. But with all those new convenience store locations and all those dollar stores and vending machines just salivating for the Twinkie, there are plenty of new hungry mouths to stuff to make up for those lost Twinkie loyalists. And, sure enough, some 50 million Twinkies were set to arrive in stores by July 15.

All that seems to be missing is a rallying cry, a campaign slogan that will make people cheer for the Twinkie after years of struggling under the perfidious yoke of unionism. Maybe Rocky Balboa would summon up the spirit of this resurgent snack food finally having a chance to duke it out with Snickers and M&M’s, mano a mano. Or perhaps something like John Lennon’s anthemic “All we are saying, is give peace/Twinkies a chance” would work. Or perhaps, with a more sardonic tone, Julius Ceasar might turn to the snack food and say “et tu, Twinkie?”As it turns out, the slogan has already been chosen. “The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever” is the tagline, which sound to me as if it was conjured up by a non-union sloganeering shop based in deepest Asia. Nevertheless, we all love an underdog and a scrapper; and what real chance of success did the Twinkie have before bankruptcy? Will consumers rise to the challenge?

There is, however, a sad note upon which to end this uplifting story. Twinkies will not be sold in Canada. There used to be a distribution arrangement with the Saputo company—the maker of the Vachon cake—but that arrangement has expired. (Although until yesterday there were a few boxes left at the Foodland). Well, I guess Mr. Metropoulos is pretty busy looking for new U.S. customers. We wouldn’t have liked the new Twinkie anyway; and even if we did, we would have boycotted it, right?

There is a saying—or if there isn’t, there might as well be—to the effect that “as the Twinkie goes, so goes America.” And there goes America; stuffed with Twinkies, but starved for decent-paying jobs.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca