A Twinkie is an American snack cake, described as "golden sponge cake with a creamy filling". It was formerly made and distributed by Hostess Brands. The brand is currently owned by Hostess Brands, Inc., itself currently undergoing an acquisition by The J.M. Smucker Company and having been formerly owned by private equity firms Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos and Company as the second incarnation of Hostess Brands. During bankruptcy proceedings, Twinkie production was suspended on November 15, 2012, and resumed after an absence of a few months from American store shelves, becoming available again nationwide on July 15, 2013.
Old HB, Inc., known as Hostess Brands from 2009 to 2013 and established in 1930 as Interstate Bakeries Corporation, was a wholesale baker and distributor of bakery products in the United States. Before its 2012 closure and liquidation, it owned the Hostess, Wonder Bread, Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison, Butternut Breads, and Drake's brands.
Drake's is a brand of American baked goods. The company was founded by Newman E. Drake in 1896 in Harlem, New York, as The N.E. Drake Baking Company, but it is now owned by McKee Foods. The company makes snack cake products such as Devil Dogs, Funny Bones, Coffee Cakes, Ring Dings, and Yodels. Drake's has traditionally been marketed primarily in the Northeastern U.S., but it expanded to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S. regions in 2016. The products are made under the Orthodox Union kosher certification guidelines.
Wonder Bread is a brand of sliced bread which originated in the United States in 1921 and was one of the first to be sold pre-sliced nationwide in 1930. The brand is currently owned by Flowers Foods in the United States.
A Ding Dong is a chocolate cake produced and distributed in the United States by Hostess Brands and in Canada from Vachon Inc. under the name King Dons; in some U.S. markets, it was previously known as Big Wheels. With the exception of a brief period in 2013, the Ding Dong has been produced continuously since 1967. It is round with a flat top and bottom, close to three inches in diameter and slightly taller than an inch, similar in shape and size to a hockey puck. A white creamy filling is injected into the center and a thin coating of chocolate glaze covers the cake. The Ding Dong was originally wrapped in a square of thin aluminum foil, enabling it to be carried in lunches without melting the chocolate glaze.
Newman E. Drake was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded Drake's, an American baking company now owned by McKee Foods
James Alexander Dewar was a Canadian inventor known for inventing the Twinkie in 1931.
Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. is the American corporate arm of the Mexican multinational bakery product manufacturing company Grupo Bimbo. It is the largest bakery company in the United States. The company, headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, owns many fresh bread and sweet baked goods brands in the United States, including Entenmann's, Sara Lee, and Thomas'. It is also a top advertising sponsor for many major soccer teams around the globe.
Merita is a brand of breads that was produced by Hostess Brands and now produced by Flowers Foods, available throughout the Southeastern United States until November 16, 2012, when Hostess's management decided to liquidate Hostess. The company gave as their reason for this action that they had been crippled by a strike by BCTGM, the bakers' union. Union spokespersons attributed the company's situation to poor management over a long period of years.
The history of California bread as a prominent factor in the field of bread baking dates from the days of the California Gold Rush around 1849, encompassing the development of sourdough bread in San Francisco. It includes the rise of artisan bakeries in the 1980s, which strongly influenced what has been called the "Bread Revolution".
Bost's Bread was a brand of baked bread distributed in the Western Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee. Bakers in the eastern parts of the Carolinas and Virginia put out a similar product called Bunny Bread, made with nearly the same recipe.
Hostess CupCake is an American brand of snack cake produced and distributed by Hostess Brands and currently owned by private equity firms Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos & Company. Its most common form is a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing and vanilla creme filling, with seven distinctive white squiggles across the top. However, other flavors have been available at times. It has been claimed to be the first commercially produced cupcake and has become an iconic American brand.
Colombo Baking Company was a bakery founded in 1896, known for its sourdough bread. Located at 580 Julie Ann Way in Oakland, California, it became a wholly owned division of Hostess Brands. Colombo sourdough rolls were manufactured at a satellite bakery in Sacramento, California. Along with Toscana bakery of Oakland and Parisian bakery of San Francisco, Colombo became part of the San Francisco French Bread Company (SFFBC) which was acquired by Hostess in 1994. The brands competed locally in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a result of Hostess liquidating the company, Colombo shuttered its operation in November, 2012. The SFFBC, through Colombo's bakery, was the maker of Emperor Norton San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, which ceased production in 2012, prior to the Hostess liquidation.
Ralph Leroy Nafziger was the founder of the Interstate Bakeries Corporation, which eventually became Hostess Brands.
Hostess Brands is an American-based bakery company formed in 2013. It owns several bakeries in the United States that produce snack cakes under the Hostess and Dolly Madison brand names and its Canadian subsidiary, Voortman Cookies Limited, produces wafers and cookies under the Voortman brand name. It is headquartered in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas. Its main operating subsidiaries are Hostess Brands, LLC, and Voortman Cookies Limited.
Hostess Cake, mostly known simply as Hostess, is a brand under which snack cakes are sold by Hostess Brands. The brand originated in 1919 when the first Hostess CupCake was sold. However, it is better-known as the brand under which Twinkies are sold, after that product appeared in 1930.
The Campbell Baking Company is a historic building located in Waterloo, Iowa, United States. Built in 1927, the single-story, yellow brick structure is basically a utilitarian building with Spanish Revival decorative elements on its primary and secondary façades. An addition from the early 1930s complements the original building, while additions from 1957 and 1977 do not. The last addition incorporated an unrelated brick building into the bakery complex. The original building was designed by the Toledo, Ohio architectural firm of Mills, Rhines, Bellman & Nordhoff, and built by the John G. Miller Construction Company. The building represents the consolidation of the bakery industry in the early 20th century from neighborhood retail bakers to local wholesalers to national industrial wholesale bakery companies. The Campbell Baking Company entered the Waterloo market as a financial backer of the Peerless Baking Company, which was formed in 1917. Campbell took over Peerless in 1921 in an older bakery building. It had become outmoded and too small for their needs, so they had this building constructed. They produce Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkies here. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
General Host Corp. was a New York-based food and food-related company. It was also the owner of Frank's Nursery & Crafts until the company's bankruptcy in 2004.
