Days of the Twinkie may be numbered

Baked goods maker Hostess Brands LLC said today it will close its bakery in Schiller Park.
A Hostess spokesman said the company will close the bakery, where Twinkies were first invented, to "enhance its production and distribution capabilities and efficiencies."

Hostess Brands LLC says the spongy yellow cakes will have a shelf life of 45 days when they start hitting shelves again July 15. That's nearly three weeks longer than the 26 days the previous owner had stated as the shelf life for Twinkies.
A spokeswoman for Hostess, Hannah Arnold, says the change to extend the shelf life was actually made by the old company that went bankrupt, with the longer-lasting cakes first hitting shelves on Nov. 1 of last year.

But the old company went out of business and stopped production just weeks after that, meaning the Twinkies most people are familiar with had the shorter lifespan.
Arnold declined to say what changes were made to extend the shelf life, saying that it is proprietary information.

The first Twinkies were quite different from the ones we know today. For one thing, they were made with banana cream filling — not vanilla. You see, in World War II, there was a banana shortage and so vanilla became the standard flavor.

The eggs, milk and butter in early Twinkies gave them a shelf life of only two days.

- The private-equity owners of Hostess Brands LLC are planning to put the maker of Twinkies and other snack cakes up for sale in early 2015, potentially valuing it at more than $1.7 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co., which bought Hostess Brands out of bankruptcy for $410 million in March 2013, have received inquiries from some potential buyers about selling the cake business, the people said.

Hostess Brands is also having conversations with investment banks Rothschild, Credit Suisse Group AG and Perella Weinberg Partners about advisory roles they are likely to have in a potential sale, the people said.

The sources asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Apollo, Credit Suisse and Rothschild declined to comment, while Metropoulos, Hostess Brands and Perella Weinberg did not immediately respond to requests by the news agency for comment.

Deliberations over a potential sale, first reported by The New York Post on November 11, follow a remarkable turnaround in the past year and a half spearheaded by Apollo and Metropoulos, a consumer industry veteran.

“The long-term viability of this effort is highly uncertain,” David Durkee, the union’s president, said in a July 2013 letter. “Rather than hire professional, experienced bakers who have produced quality snack cakes in the company’s bakeries for decades, Hostess management has chosen instead to hire primarily workers with little or no experience in the demanding wholesale snack cake baking industry.

“The B.C.T.G.M. has consistently stated our interest in working cooperatively and productively with the new owners of this company. We have always maintained that the experience, skill and professionalism of our members offer the new owners, who have no experience in the wholesale snack cake business, the best chance for long-term success in consistently putting out a quality product.”