Today was the highly anticipated auction of the major Hostess Bread brands. As expected Flowers Foods, the Stalking Horse bidder, was the winner of the auction. Actually, they were the only bidder as their $360 million bid was unopposed. There will now be a hearing with the bankruptcy court on March 19 to approve the bid.  This means that Home Pride, Wonder, Nature’s Pride and Butternut will soon be distributed by Flowers Foods.

There was also a second auction for a Hostess Brand. Flowers Foods had also been the Stalking Horse bidder for the Beefsteak brand, but were outbid by Grupo Bimbo. I had thought that something might happen with this brand since it had been separated from the other bread brands. My suspicions were right :-).

We can now all start looking forward to the day when:

I thought that this picture that I used in an earlier post called Baking Bread would be a nice picture to illustrate the sale of the bread brands. This picture comes from Stories about Sally by Eleanor Thomas which was a Social Studies textbook used in the 1950’s. You can click on Baking Bread to see pictures of the complete commercial baking process which has not changed much in the last 60+ years.

I am hoping that Flowers Foods will release details soon about their distribution plans so that we will know when Home Pride will be back on our shelves. Since the approval from the courts will not come until close to the end of the month, it does not seem like it will be in March. Hopefully we will know soon.

For those of you waiting on Twinkies, the auction is on March 13. Only two more weeks until we know for sure who will be buying them.

Steven

For more posts on this subject, click on Home Pride Bread.