OT: Hostess Brands Liquidating

rosacer wrote:Good luck (health) with Vachon products .

Lizistired wrote:I still say Bye Bye Twinkies! Make room for real food.

49er wrote:

Lizistired wrote:I still say Bye Bye Twinkies! Make room for real food.

Easy for you to say as someone who was having a big time junk food craving yesterday:) I was dying for some ho hos but settled for a dunkin donut:)

49er

StuUnderPressure wrote:Without any knowledge of any impending catastrophe, my wife bought 1 box each of Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, & Twinkies.

Now, they can NOT be found anywhere. Wish she had bought more!

Still have most of each box.

Will have to ration what is left to ease the withdrawal pains.

49er wrote:

StuUnderPressure wrote:Without any knowledge of any impending catastrophe, my wife bought 1 box each of Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, & Twinkies.

Now, they can NOT be found anywhere. Wish she had bought more!

Still have most of each box.

Will have to ration what is left to ease the withdrawal pains.

I feel your pain big time. I was hurting badly yesterday until I consumed the dunkin donut to cover the withdrawal issues I was experiencing.

49er

But who was ultimately to blame for the company failure? Here at Forbes, Leadership contributor Adam Hartung had a provocative piece on Sunday where he fingered management. In its most recent bankruptcy filing, writes Hartung, the company imposed “draconian cuts to wages and benefits.” This was unrealistic and damaging, he says, “tantamount to management saying to those who sell wheat they expect to buy flour at 2/3 the market price.” The company also kept trying to prop up its old business of obsolete products, failing to cook up more palatable foods with higher margins. Then it scapegoated the unions.

Today Forbes has a piece by Hank Cardello, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and author of Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat. Cardello agrees with Hartung that Hostess management is to blame, for failing to alter its products amid dramatic changes in consumer tastes. Other junk food producers, including Coca-Cola and General Mills, have adapted and thrived.

Other writers, including Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times, Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal, and John Carney of CNBC, have described the inner financial dealings at Hostess and its relationship with its unions, as the reasons for the company’s demise.

At the Journal, Holman Jenkins says that private equity is not to blame for Hostess’s demise. Rather, “the real story is the story of two unions, the Teamsters and the Bakery union of the AFL-CIO.” As Jenkins has it, though the Teamsters agreed to givebacks to finance the latest Hostess turnaround attempt, the Teamsters held onto work rules that would have driven the company into the ground. Examples: Drivers couldn’t help with unloading, and products like Wonder Bread and Twinkies were not allowed to ride on the same truck. Jenkins says the bakers decided to strike because bakery operations were efficient compared to the delivery process, and they didn’t want to prop up a Teamster contract that would eventually bring the company down.