If you do your own grocery shopping and you didn’t know it before now, Hostess Brands (formerly known as Interstate Bakeries, Interstate Brands) rented most of the retail space in your local grocery store, squeezing out most local competitors (the same way Frito-Lay takes most of the snack food aisle, charging $7 a pound for potato chips by squeezing out the competition – their day is coming).
Hostess was the distributor for:
- Their own snack products (Hohos, Ding-Dongs, Twinkies)
- Drake’s snacks
- Dolly Madison
- Wonder Bread
- Home Pride Bread
- Beefsteak Bread
- Merita Bread
- Nature’s Pride
- Holsum
- Butternut
- J.J. Nisson
- about a dozen other regional brands
I went to wal-mart the other day and walked down the much different bread aisle with a much different variety of brands of bread and snack foods. At the place where the Twinkies probably used to be, I found this:
It was sitting among a group of similar snack products, most of which had artificial strawberry fillings of one sort or another.
Where are these coming from? China?
I just learned from my visit to Wikipedia that Bimbo is now the largest distributor of bread products in the United States – they already own Sara Lee, Thomas, Arnolds, Bobali (pizza crust) – and are the Mexican distributor of Wonder Bread.
I also learned that Wal-Mart is in the running to buy the Hostess brands from the chapter 7 bankruptcy court that is liquidating Hostess.
Getting up early to bake bread? Just one more job Americans won’t do.
Did you stock up on a save any Twinkies? Wonder how much different they were from the current selections? Did you buy any? I’ve eaten Twinkies andhave to admit they are (were) tasty.
I have been making pizza from scratch since I was a teenager. No one in my family really likes restaurant pizza, although there are a few exceptional restaurants. Once you’ve tasted the best, most delicious perfect pizza it is hard to accept the pizza served in most restaurants.
I have no twinkies. I know the brand is too valuable to vanish, and people buying them on eBay were throwing money away. They’re coming back, even if they are made in Mexico.
Walmart buying up the brands would create an explosion among those who have a hatred of Walmart but can’t quite verbalize why. Sunbeam is one brand showing up in several chains. They were a southern brand that recently showed up in CT before I moved. Oh gosh, Wikipedia says Bimbo is also their distributor(Mexico?). The US distributor seems to be Flowers Foods…
“Let them eat Mexican cake!” Carlos Slim
Flowers made the starting bid two weeks ago, offering $360 million, which seems like peanuts in the era of the Fed creating trillions at a time
Grupo bimbo also runs Entenmann’s. They’re going after the snack business and might try for the bread as well.
Greek immigrant Billionaire C Dean Metropoulis is also in the race. He currently runs Pabst Brewing – in the past he was involved with PAM spray, chef boyardee, bumble bee, aunt jemima, log cabin, Duncan Hines…
Walmart and Krogers were floated as potential buyers in December, but not much recently
Yeah I figure these brands are going to come back. It could turn into a bit of fun to watch the ‘show’ if Walmart did get the brand. Who knows? Who cares? I try to keep my distance from the major brands, not entirely feasible, but still worth the effort to make/grow your own food.
I’ve heard that Carlos Slim is a real cool dude.
If you pay attention, bread people like Flowers (and much of the store) are stocked not by the supermarket, but by people who purchase a route. They do the work, and the supermarket pays them based on what goes through the scanners. The supermarket rents the shelf space and (within reason) doesn’t care about the inventory. The store doesn’t care how much product they deliver or what they remove unsold. The route owner has all the risks. With Hostess, the route people were employees, working under a Teamster union contract. Guess which model works better?
Another interesting detail is the current private equity owner has close ties to Richard Gephardt – they stepped to try to save union jobs at a company broken beyond comprehension – last year, their sales were $2.5 billion and they lost $1.1 billion.
I used to buy their split top butter bread but for the past couple years it was clear they cheapened the ingredients – their $3 a loaf bread was no better than the store brands and frequently was nowhere near fresh.
A correction to my original post. They didn’t go to chapter 7 – they are in Chapter 11 and the judge authorized sale of the brands and bakeries and distribution centers. Why they didn’t go to 7, I don’t know. It might be it makes a difference in how the union pension fund gets transferred to taxpayers to fund.
I bought four bimbos – now that I know who makes breads, my last 4 purchases were Sara Lee, Brownberry x 2, and Ball Park brand buns. Sara Lee bought the ball park meat packing business in 1989.
We sold baseball to Mexico too, apparently. Apple Pie will be next.
The best Apple Pies are made using Transparent variety apples. Of course the crust can be a factor too! Good luck finding all that in a store……
Interesting, on the Sara Lee bread here at the house, it says baked by Earthgrains. I know they were the ones who did Arnold bread.
We generally buy Heiners bread, but it was bought several years ago and is no longer independent, Bummer
Grupo Bimbo is taking over. If its a strange cookie name, and on a shelf a ‘china-mart’
its from mexico.
I use to like the ‘Zingers’ Hostess made about ten years ago.
Rainbo bread is gone too.
parrott
Another company that owns a wide swath of the rented shelf space is Kellogg’s. in addition to their cereals, they own Keeblers, Pringles, Austin, Cheez-it, Morningstar farms, Famous Amos, Murray’s, Worthington, mother’s cookies…
I have a fuzzy memory that Quaker foods was talking to Kellogg’s about handling their distribution, but don’t know if that ever happened.
Quaker Oaks is distributed by PepsiCo, aka Frito-Lay
As to why you should care, if the economy and/or social fabric starts to unravel, the failure of a few companies or their distribution systems could leave big empty areas on store shelves. It takes a while to build a new bread bakery and distribution system from scratch. Centralized control of the food supply is a marker for a coming totalitarian government.
And, GMO food is also a marker for the coming totalitarian government. The Police State is coming soon, very soon.
ART YOU BETTER start speaking Spanish better SIR!
ITS
Grupo Bimbo Rancho El Bimbo
TO YOU!!
I can only do my own little part and resist those pretty looking cheap bimbo’s!!
Today’s update is Flowers is out front to buy the bread business, and the Pabst guy with the P/E money is going after the twinkies and hohos