Once the transaction is completed, private equity giant Apollo Global Management APO and Metropoulos and his family will hold approximately 42 percent of Gores Holdings. Metropoulos will remain Hostess' executive chairman and William Toler will continue as chief executive. At the time, many classic Hostess products such as Twinkies were so scarce that fans took to hoarding them. The spongy creamed-filled cake made its return that year.
Another classic Hostess snack treat, Suzy-Qs, are also coming back. Dow Jones. Jargon wsj. To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In.
In MySpace's case, the struggling social network resurfaced with Justin Timberlake as its pitchman and an emphasis on music. Not so, with Hostess. According to Lubeck, the team working on the relaunch decided that this was no time to talk new ingredients and product lines.
Instead, they turned the comeback, itself, into the campaign theme, designing the entire strategy around the tagline "The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever. But right now, while there's consumer anticipation around Hostess coming back, we thought, let's talk about that. The exact phrasing of the tagline, complete with its incorrect grammar, was, Lubeck says, "by design.
A series of outdoor ads, which include billboards in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Hostess's hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, were designed to play up the anticipation of the brand's return, Lubeck says.
It was frankly very surprising to me. Out of the sale, they got the Hostess brands including Twinkie, recipes, and five factories. Jhawar : That's it. There was no employees, there was no ingredients, there was no inventory. And I have to tell you, it was very odd during diligence, walking through plants where, when you walk in, they're empty and the person who's walking me through the plant has to turn on the lights. Narrator : And, quickly, Andy and Dean got to work fixing the company.
First, they tackled that delivery system. Jhawar : The old company did direct store delivery. We were gonna transform it into a distribution-to-warehouse model. Instead of going direct to every grocery store in America, you then go to Walmart's distribution centers or Kroger's distribution centers instead, and then they ship it out to their various stores.
Narrator : But in order to move Twinkies through a warehouse, they first had to increase the shelf life. Historically, Twinkies only lasted 25 days. Jhawar : People would put Twinkies in their earthquake shelters because everybody had this perception that Twinkies would last forever.
That really, it wasn't the case. Narrator : Andy and Dean invested millions to develop a Twinkie that tasted the same, but lasted longer. Jhawar : We were at first able to get the shelf life to 45 days, and then ultimately to 65 days of shelf life. And so that really helped get the retailers comfortable that they could take it into their warehouses and that the product quality would not be compromised.
It also meant Hostess could affordably deliver Twinkies to drugstores and dollar stores, markets they'd never reached before. Narrator : Next up, Andy turned to factory efficiency. Narrator : Finally, the duo worked on innovating the product line with smaller pack sizes and mini Twinkies.
Jhawar : Those products really didn't get the resonance in the marketplace. And so then we just jumped wholeheartedly into embrace the brand, embrace what you are, which is indulgence. Narrator : The team had to make all these changes in a matter of months. In July , the once dead Twinkies returned to shelves to tons of fanfare.
It was really kind of unbelievable. A lot of that, frankly, that excitement and buzz, ironically could've never come about if Twinkies never came off the shelf. Bitter : The trite saying is, what?
In , Apollo and Metropoulos took Hostess public. Apollo and Metropoulos' gamble, that Americans still loved Twinkies, had paid off.
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