Hostess Brands Inc. is an American bakery company formed in 2013. Its main operating subsidiaries are Hostess Brands, LLC, and Voortman Cookies Limited.
The company owns several bakeries in the United States that produce snack cakes under the Hostess and Dolly Madison brand names and its Canadian subsidiary, Voortman Cookies Ltd., produces wafers and cookies under the Voortman brand name. It is headquartered in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas.
The Twinkie is an American snack cake, described on its packaging as "golden sponge cake with a creamy filling". It was formerly made and distributed by Hostess Brands. The brand is currently owned by Hostess Brands, Inc., in turn currently owned by The J.M. Smucker Company and having been formerly owned by private equity firms Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos and Company as the second incarnation of Hostess Brands. During bankruptcy proceedings, Twinkie production was suspended on November 15, 2012, and resumed after an absence of a few months from American store shelves, becoming available again nationwide on July 15, 2013.
Grupo Bimbo's Vachon Bakery, which owns the Canadian rights to the product and made them during their absence from the U.S. market, produces Twinkies in Canada at a bakery in Montreal. They are made in Emporia, Kansas, in the U.S. Twinkies are also available in Mexican stores as "Submarinos" made by Marinela, and as "Tuinky" made by Wonder; both Marinela and Wonder are also subsidiaries of Mexican bread company Grupo Bimbo. In Egypt, Twinkies are produced under the company Edita. Twinkies are also available in the United Kingdom and Ireland under the Hostess brand name where they are sold in Sainsbury's, Tesco, ASDA, and B&M stores. Twinkies are produced and distributed by multiple commercial bakeries in China, where Hostess does not own the brand.
The J.M. Smucker Company, also known as Smucker's, is an American manufacturer of food and beverage products. Headquartered in Orrville, Ohio, the company was founded in 1897 as a maker of apple butter. J.M. Smucker currently has three major business units: consumer foods, pet foods, and coffee. Its flagship brand, Smucker's, produces fruit preserves, peanut butter, syrups, frozen crustless sandwiches, and ice cream toppings.
Among J.M. Smucker's other food and coffee brands are Bick's Pickle, Café Bustelo, Carnation Milk (Canada), Crosse & Blackwell, Dunkin', Five Roses (Canada), Folgers, Golden Temple (Canada), Jif, Knott's Berry Farm, Laura Scudder's, Robin Hood (Canada), Santa Cruz Organic, and Smucker's Uncrustables. Pet food brands include Meow Mix and Milk-Bone, among others. In 2023, Smuckers acquired Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, in a $5.6 billion cash and stock deal. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: SJM), J.M. Smucker ranks 426th on the Fortune 500, with an estimated 2022 market value of $14.6 billion.