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Eh, Scre Twinkies. You people really need to get in any Quebec convenience store/grocery, and by a Vachon's May West.
That's the stuff.
Vachon is already producing Twinkies for some part of North America. Maybe they plan to stage a whole US Takeover?!
Having recently eaten one of their CBO burgers, I can say that it might not be universal, but every McD's in a 10 mile radius of my home produces food so greasy that it's probably like how duck confit is preserved in a layer of fat to keep the oxygen and bacteria away from the meat. In fact having read the wiki on duck confit, I'd say it is exactly the same thing happening.
Not a huge surprise- the Twinkie (and to a lesser extent all the other Hostess Foods brand names) has a huge marketing value, and with the original company going bankrupt there's a chance for other companies to buy that value at potentially much less than its actual market worth. There wasn't ever a question as to whether or not Twinkies would survive, IMO- it's just a matter of whether a single company manages to secure the entire Hostess Foods brand portfolio, or if it gets cut apart and divided among different bidders.
So that means this won't happen?
Warning: Strong language.
Respectfully,
Brian P.
The Latest: the bankruptcy judge has declined the Chapter 7 request, trying to force both sides back to the table.
Looks like the Bakers' Union is willing to go back into talks. Both sides have agreed to mediation and they're going to try it out.
Maybe Twinkies do Last Forever.
It's a link to an NPR article.
It means that they're going to go into talks. If the mediation is successful, they'll negotiate a new contract and everyone can go back to work. Hostess will still be in chapter 11 bankruptcy, but it could potentially reorganize as an ongoing business or sell itself whole hog to a willing buyer that can pay off the debts and get the business at a steep discount.
If they still can't get an agreement, then all the employees will be out of work and they'll have to tear down the factories and sell the business off piece-meal.
While my opinions of the participants in this whole fiasco are too political to repeat (also, too full of salty language), I can say that I don't desire anyone to be out of a job in the current economy. Having spent most of the last 3 months looking for a job for after I graduate, it is both depressing and very un-fun. Also, I doubt the factories would all be torn down. A factory is, after all, a very large capital investment, and someone will eventually want a big box of a building to do industrial activity in. Whether or not they will ever be used as bakeries is a different story.
Did anyone else have a "Day old hostess" store to frequent growing up? My mother pretty much got all the bread and snacks for the family at one. And then we let the twinkies sit in the cupboard for a month, so it wasn't until I was an adult that I ate a good twinkie.
Dang, those things are tough . Someone evidently asked if twinkies can burn and the answer is apparently no, no they can't. At ALL.
So maybe someone can snap up the recipe for use as a building material. It's gotta be better than asbestos.
:smallsmile:
Tongue-in-cheek,
Brian P.
Well, that's the mediation checkbox done . The speed suggests the company was never serious about this mediation -- the management wants out of business as quickly as possible.
Respectfully,
Brian P.
That statement can go two ways. The company wants this complete while there are still some assets to sell off.
And the company probably wasn't the only one that wasn't serious about the mediation. From reports I've read, I think the only side that was serious about it was the judge.
Relation of witness who actually worked there. Also, report by Forbes. So, yeah, loot, plunder, burn.
As someone who also worked there, though in IT instead of baking, I can tell you it's not so simple as "evil execs loot and plunder (hehe Captain Planet reference) the company and watch it burn".
One of his final statements is correct, though: it's doubtful the company could have continued working if it wasn't profitable at $2.5bil/year.
But consider that the aggregate total of all the executive pay (for the top 20 guys or so) comes out to a couple tenths of one percent of that company income, and it's not so clear it's "corporate raiding".
Many of those plants (where most/all people involved in running it were union members!) were not only woefully behind in technology, they were often woefully inefficient. Like, millions of dollars of over-production inefficient.
Many of them (especially plant managers) thought they knew better than "the system", and would, when having even a minor technical problem, skip right over the Help Desk's head and call the Chief Information Officer directly. There were times our boss asked "why didn't you guys help so and so", and we'd go "uh we never heard that plant was having any trouble at all, they never even tried calling us".
The plant workers and drivers seemed reluctant to even try adopting new technologies (like the handheld units for tracking inventory, which went from 20-year old bricks with calculator-like output, to much newer, slimmer units that were sort of rough-and-tumble palm computers), often stubborn and/or ignorant when we tried to help them over the phone, and often completely ungrateful. Not to mention the ones who called at 2:00 in the morning for a password reset.
Am I saying every single worker was lazy, resistant to change, ignorant of technology, and ungrateful? By no means. But there were plenty who were, and the company as a whole had a very slow "reaction time" when it came to updating itself. You can't solely pin that on executives.
Well, yes, I can't, but when one side is called to do nothing but give for 7 years, while other takes huge pay raises while complaining ones actually making money are ungrateful, something is wrong. I wouldn't say no to raises had they tried to address problems you mention, at it is the job of leadership, but they did nothing. Why someone who doesn't produce results is given a raise? He should get the pay cut first, unless he is really doing lootem' plunder policy.
And, to be honest, knowing US executive pay grades I wouldn't bet that top 20 guys are so insignificant, in many companies crew counted in thousands takes home less than top 20 guys. I'd suspect to be the case here, too, especially after all cuts to one side and raises to the other. Yes, it was old, inefficient company, but other companies somehow manage to modernize even without making runs on their worker's money.
The bonus to the CEO, Driscoll, was while the company wasn't shutting down, and was likely to try and retain him. He got no stock options or similar items. And the reason to retain him (and I'm not at all convinced he's solely at fault) is so you don't have a sudden change of leadership when your company's about to die. But that's a moot point.
Also, the figures given in the bakery worker's account don't jive with figures given for, say, what the Teamster's union agreed to.
The figures I've seen state that, for 9-10 different executives, the combined total of the bonuses (paid to keep them around while the company liquidates, which is by no means an instant process) is less than $2million. So, again, if you double that, it's 4/10 of 1%. And it's the "please stay here and actually help sell this off".
As for why they didn't modernize, I don't know. It's likely that a fair bit was mis-management. But some of it was, perhaps, a struggle with the daily costs of the business vs. the cost of upgrades. I don't have their financial reports, as they aren't a publicly traded company.