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Weird History Food is getting snacky with the History of Hostess. Maker of some of our favorite cakes and snacks, including Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Cup Cakes, and Ho Ho's, Hostess has been the mainstay of America's cupboards for decades. But where did Hostess begin? Well, get ready for a sugar high, we're going unwrap Hostess' long, sweet, and sometimes bitter, history.
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Today, we're putting the icing on the history of Hostess
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In the late 1800s, Hugh Ward and his son Robert moved from New York City to Pittsburgh
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Back in New York, Hugh and his own father had run a small bakery on Broom Street
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Eager to keep the family trade alive, Hugh and Robert opened up an all-new operation in Pennsylvania
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He started yet another bakery just across the Allegheny River. This third business, the Ward Bread Company, would slowly grow into the largest single bakery in America by the 1900s
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With loads of cash in hand, Robert decided to turn the whole ship around and head back to New York
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He was able to build two huge factories right from the jump These two state-of-the-art facilities opened up in 1911
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By 1925, William had changed the company's name to Continental Baking Company
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and had bought up three other bread-making competitors, including Wonder Bread Around this time, the company began producing its first ever cupcakes
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It helped to launch an all-new brand of pre-packaged desserts for continental baking
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They called the brand Hostess, and the world would never be the same
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By 1930, because there really wasn't a way to transport fresh produce across long distances
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Hostess was only able to produce strawberry shortcakes for a few months each year
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But what if, during the off-season, they filled their strawberry shortcakes with a simple sugar cream
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At the low low cost of two for five cents Twinkies were an instant success with Depression families In 1948 a man by the name of D Doc Rice sweetened up the cake mix and the chocolate
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icing, pumped the cupcakes full of cream filling, and drew a sweet squiggly line across the
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top of each one. And voila! The modern Hustus cupcake was born and released to the wider public in 1950
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From there, they went hog wild with cream filling. 1961 saw the release of the Suzy Q
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While 1967 saw the release of both the Ho-Ho and the Ding Dong
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In 1984, Ralston Purina bought Continental Baking Company for about half a billion dollars
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Only to sell it to Interstate Bakeries Corporation 11 years later IBC filed for bankruptcy and attempted to rebrand
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Changing their name to Hostess Brands in 2009 But in 2012, Hostess Brands filed for bankruptcy again
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In the months that followed, Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Ding Dongs, and more vanished without a trace
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In the aftermath of the Great Twinkie Collapse, the snack cake portion of Hostess Brands was sold to Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropolis & Company for $410 million
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And less than a year after going off the market, Hostess products slowly made their triumphant return to store shelves
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And on September 11th, 2023, Smuckers revealed it was buying Hostess for $5.6 billion
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The company pumps out over 1 million Twinkies every single day, producing about 400 million Twinkies each and every year
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