Coming to Terms with the Twinkie
A couple of years ago, the media was abuzz with the news that the venerable American industrial snack cake business, Hostess, might meet its demise, and with it the Twinkie, a cream-filled sponge roll.
I’ve never eaten a Twinkie or a Hostess cupcake (let me say this is not snobbery about processed food as I love potato chips, but a dislike of soft cake). But as journalists rounded up stories about mass-produced cupcakes, even I got involved as Marco Werman of the BBC asked about Bimbo, the Mexico-based rival to Hostess.
A Hostess cupcake split in half to show the filling. Wikipedia
Well, never fear, Hostess, under new management, looks set to return to its 2012 $1.3 billion–yes, $1.3 billion–sales levels.
How Twinkies and Hostess cupcakes get to the convenience store, obvious to anyone in the business, is an eye-opener for someone like me, interested in food and food politics, but not directly involved.
It’s another planet from the discussions about food I read on Facebook and in food magazines as a fascinating piece on Hostess by Julie Jargon a couple of days ago in the Wall Street Journal and the earlier “Twinkies are not just back from the dead” by Drew Harwell in the Washington Post make clear.
- The new owners Hostess had a jump start on revivifying the snack cake. Why? The free advertising from the media buzz on its presumed death.
- Employees have been cut from 19,000 to 1,100. I’m reduced to words like gee and wow and my goodness. How? Robots.
- Bakeries have been reduced to three, one in Indianapolis one in Columbus, Georgia, and one in Emporia, Kansas. Output 1 million Twinkies a day. Repeat, gee, wow, my goodness. How? A $20 million Auto-Bake system.
Twinkies. Wikipedia
- Shelf life of a Twinkie is 65 days. How? Millions poured into research in food chemistry.
- Hostess is launching a product novel for them, bread. Marketing? Not a problem, since consumers already believed that this non-existent product existed.
- Given all this, a story about consumers having no choice, about corporations forcing Twinkies down eaters’ throats, really won’t wash. Although consumers are seeking healthier products, Mr. Toler, the Hostess CEO explains, they also want to treat themselves. “Our primary focus is on being an indulgent snack.”
Next week, I’m off to New York. The Museum of Food and Drink, together with the New School is putting on a roundtable on “Feeding Tomorrow: Technology and the New Food Ethics”. If the new food ethics is what I suspect it is, the Twinkie is the very epitome of what the new food ethicists loathe about modern food.
So I am really curious about what my fellow panelists, John Coupland, President-Elect of the Institute of Food Technologists, Stefani Bardin, artist, and Tamar Adler, author of The Everlasting Meal, are going to say about the new food ethics and technology. And how David Arnold, a leader in high-tech cooking and the force behind MOFAD will frame the discussion.
For my part, as I think about what I am going to say, it seems to be shaping up along the lines of “Tomorrow is Already Here: Coming to terms with the Twinkie.”
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Haven’t had a Twinkie in decades. Can’t say that I would consider consuming them now, but I loved them as a college student. (Didn’t like them when I was really young, as I thought they smelled like nail polish. But in college, sugar was a key part of exam time.)
Always sorry to see jobs lost and businesses fail, but this one wouldn’t affect my eating habits — though I imagine it will be another blow to the hoped-for economic recovery.
As for knowing how these things get to market — I used to work for Kraft, which while it doesn’t make Twinkies, is good at getting vast quantities of food to widespread markets. It’s an amazing thing to see.
The loss of jobs obviously continues a long-term trend in the baking industry, which was originally not a very nice industry to work in. I hope they find other and better jobs, but that’s never easy. Getting vast quantities of food distributed is such an amazing feature of the modern food system.
I haven’t had a Twinkie in years. Now I want one…with my coffee.
Well, there on sale in 100,000 convenience stores. One near you I am sure, Norm.
Twinkie seem more like yesterday than like tomorrow. They are 85 years old.
Absolutely. And we are still talking as if industrially processed food is something new and problematic. Our sainted grandmothers had Twinkies.
The point about shelf life is that they had to increase it, to allow for the new distribution and smaller stores. Most people thought of the original Twinkie as indestructible, but the new one has a much longer shelf life.
Still has a way to go before it can rival British Christmas pudding or wedding cake! Thanks for the helpful analysis.
I’m curious to hear how the RoundTable went down. Any discussion anywhere you could link to? Thanks.
It was a very nice and amiable event. I’ll post a link pronto.