Death of Hostess and other American places.
By Mark William Darus.
Well, the Hostess upper echelon didn’t get monster bonuses for trashing the best bakery in America, but they got bonuses all the same!
Nice.
Wouldn’t it be nice if their employees, the rank and file, received bonuses for their years/decades of loyal servitude keeping an American mass bakery tradition alive?
What a great Xmas seasons all these folks are going to have this year!
Missing Ho Ho’s, forgetting about Beefsteak Rye, Home Pride and Wonderbread, I began to wonder how would purchase Hostess’ recipes and processes for those wondrous products and remake them exactly the same way.
I believe Hostess will not sell any of those things.
They will simply start the company over again under another, yet to be promoted flag and simply hire cheap labor to produce them. And why shouldn’t they? Plenty of other companies here have tried such cost-cutting measures.
Look at Circuit City <1949-2007> and their last attempt to cut costs and stay afloat: Fire all experienced hourly employees making good wages and hire part timers to replace them. (okay, this is a poor analogy at best. CC didn’t create anything except dismally poor Public Relations with this announcement and it only bolstered their stock for a few days. The company collapsed soon after.
I have to give CC credit though. They at least had the balls/tits to go public with their plan instead of having it hit the media via disgruntled employees and such.
More recently, besides the Hostess massacre, let’s look at Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants, owned by Darden Restaurants Inc. After receiving some serious backlash over their stance of chucking some 75% of its full time help for part timers as a result of the new medical benefit requirements, announced on 5 Dec 2012, they were going to rethink and reverse this stance for the time being.
Go figure they’d say this: It is the Xmas shopping season and more people, more families, will Eat-Out this time of year than any other. C’mon, do you really want to spend money at a place that says their gonna cut your sons, daughter <a single mom> hours to zippo? Right before Xmas no less…
I think they’ll do their choppin’ after all the shoppin’ is done this year. They’re just trying to save face at this point and not kill their business for the holidays.
I prefer steak, but those chains bit the dust long ago or simply re-flagged under a banner that never quite did as well historically. Brown Derby, Mountain Jacks, York Steak House and Ponderosa died over time. Brown Derby re-flagged Brown Derby Roadhouse, but never has nailed the restaurant share of the market it once proudly held. A pity, oh well.
Texas Roadhouse is alive and well. Founded by a man that started for Kentucky Fried Chicken, known know as KFC, back in the days when restaurants called Kenny Kings were alive and well. Apparently, besides learning cooking skills, he must have frequented a restaurant called the Ground Round. One of the biggest signatures of the Texas Roadhouse chain a bucket of shelled peanuts at every table.
TRH is okay, but to me fails compared to the old Brown Derby. Something about Brown Derby, perhaps my memories of youth in building things larger than life made it different, less tacky perhaps, than anything modern times has to offer.
Perhaps in modern times it’s a superficial attitude so well described in Mike Judge’s Office Space that holds American eaters so well. Pieces of flair should be adorned by wait-staff. Buttons with witty sayings, words displaying such gems as: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Is it Friday yet >the buttoned face with a tired gaze< or a white and black face that reads, How am I doing?
America: I have to ask this.
Do we really want attitude or flair when going out to eat?
Do we really need to see a cardboard reenactment of old cartoons plastered on a wall to gain our attention?
Don’t we just want simple friendly service and food that is better than we can cook for ourselves by adding seasonings on our very own grills or in our own kitchens?
Times get tougher further still.
Not so long ago, we had family style restaurants to run to for Comfort Food.
I know that in my segment of this globe, there use to be hundreds of places where a person could get a home-cooked style food breakfast, lunch or dinner. I sincerely am not exaggerating on this, there were hundreds around a ten mile radius of my home. In the last 5 years or so, most of their creators dreams died after many a year of success after them cutting back to simply doing breakfast and lunch before their glass paned doors forever closed for good.
I have to ask: Why is that? Most of these places could make a meal cheaper and, in most cases, better, than could be performed by us.
I guess the real answer is the ‘trickle down’ effect. When a large local company down-sizes or shuts down, it has a cascading effect that, like a single drop of water on a still pond, spreads waves of disturbance across a once calm surface of the lake it lays upon.
If coming to Cleveland Ohio, USA, as far as 24 hour food-troughs, we have left to date: >>> and I hear arm-fart trumpets blasting with this proclamation<<<: 4 of standing!
These magnificent places should stand proud above and most tall! Denny’s (staying as big as when I remember them in the late seventies/early eighties when I my eldest sister took me there. She is eight years older than me and would meet me behind dads garage at 1120 pm for dinner. We‘d go and she‘d treat me to a British Burger and and choc shake) , Steak and Shake (the realitive newcommer here, about 5-6 years) My Friends (11616 Detroit rd, formerly known as Vienna Deli lasting from the 1980‘s and holding strong) and Steve’s Hot Dogs, 5004 Lorain Rd or at the Biddulph Ridge shopping plaza. Steve’s has been around since the 70’s, perhaps earlier. Good food at fair price. This place can fill you happily on the smaller end of cash with good service and make you feel glad you did. Not many places, at least with me, I could hold so high a place.
There was a place called Luna’s on the Parma/Parma Hts border just east of the Pearl rd and York rd borders. Lunas was a marvelous place that for at least a decade smashed the 24 barricade and graciously fed people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. A mere slender passing time period ago, at any hour, you could happily stroll into this land of killer/over the top rich decadent deserts seldom found anywhere during any hour of the day, much less at 4:30AM in the morning and have Matzoh ball soup served fresh.
Kosher?
Luna’s always did. I’m sure they still do.
I miss them in the a 24 hour area….
Seriously, on the west side of Cleveland Ohio, where the righteous hell can a gentile get a good bowl of soup since Luna’s killed 24/7 operations? No where. Luna’s is Greek in origin, but holds a belief in community and likings of its area. Best Matzoh ball soup on the West side of Cleveland< albeit somewhat south of Cleveland-proper down a ways a bit from off Rt42 and Archwood avenue.>>
There was an Italian restaurant in Solon Ohio. Nice place, generous in garlic buttered bread building a second tier smoking area for its patrons. FAIL! This plot of land now up for sale.
Location. Location, location location… But this place had both, adjacent to an Oriental restaurant of high acclaim and a Mr. Chicken on the other end. Such a mixture of scents filled the nostrils of on the corner of Rt 91 and 43 in Ohio.
Stuck for long enough by calculated red-lights, your olfactory senses would be blended by creations of Arby’s, Boston Market, Mr Chicken, and Imperial Wok. Downshift, your nose might be caught by one of the few McDonalds remaining that has no drive-thru and the garlic tainted exhaust of Pizza hut.
All Fast food places are hiring here. Most of the serious places to eat as well.
No lack of places to eat in Northeastern Ohio.
But where do you wish to spread your hard earned cash?
I’d like to say most think before they spend, but I am an idiot. Humans can and will find rationalizations for every aspect of their being.
Even Jews do this around xmas. Why shouldn’t they be any different than Gentiles on this?
To make some happy at cheap cost…..
Let peace ring out.
I know damned well it won’t.
Nest entry will be my version of the first Noel.
Mark William Darus.
12102012
Death of Hostess bakery and other American things.
By Mark William Darus.
Well, the Hostess upper echelon didn’t get monster bonuses for trashing the best bakery in America, but they got bonuses all the same!
Nice.
Wouldn’t it be nice if their employees, the rank and file, received bonuses for their years/decades of loyal servitude keeping an American mass bakery tradition alive?
What a great Xmas seasons all these folks are going to have this year!
Missing Ho Ho’s, forgetting about Beefsteak Rye, Home Pride and Wonderbread, I began to wonder how would purchase Hostess’ recipes and processes for those wondrous products and remake them exactly the same way.
I believe Hostess will not sell any of those things.
They will simply start the company over again under another, yet to be promoted flag and simply hire cheap labor to produce them. And why shouldn’t they? Plenty of other companies here have tried such cost-cutting measures.
Look at Circuit City <1949-2007> and their last attempt to cut costs and stay afloat: Fire all experienced hourly employees making good wages and hire part timers to replace them. (okay, this is a poor analogy at best. CC didn’t create anything except dismally poor Public Relations with this announcement and it only bolstered their stock for a few days. The company collapsed soon after.
I have to give CC credit though. They at least had the balls/tits to go public with their plan instead of having it hit the media via disgruntled employees and such.
More recently, besides the Hostess massacre, let’s look at Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants, owned by Darden Restaurants Inc. After receiving some serious backlash over their stance of chucking some 75% of its full time help for part timers as a result of the new medical benefit requirements, announced on 5 Dec 2012, they were going to rethink and reverse this stance for the time being.
Go figure they’d say this: It is the Xmas shopping season and more people, more families, will Eat-Out this time of year than any other. C’mon, do you really want to spend money at a place that says their gonna cut your sons, daughter <a single mom> hours to zippo? Right before Xmas no less…
I think they’ll do their choppin’ after all the shoppin’ is done this year. They’re just trying to save face at this point and not kill their business for the holidays.
I prefer steak, but those chains bit the dust long ago or simply re-flagged under a banner that never quite did as well historically. Brown Derby, Mountain Jacks, York Steak House and Ponderosa died over time. Brown Derby re-flagged Brown Derby Roadhouse, but never has nailed the restaurant share of the market it once proudly held. A pity, oh well.
Texas Roadhouse is alive and well. Founded by a man that started for Kentucky Fried Chicken, known know as KFC, back in the days when restaurants called Kenny Kings were alive and well. Apparently, besides learning cooking skills, he must have frequented a restaurant called the Ground Round. One of the biggest signatures of the Texas Roadhouse chain a bucket of shelled peanuts at every table.
TRH is okay, but to me fails compared to the old Brown Derby. Something about Brown Derby, perhaps my memories of youth in building things larger than life made it different, less tacky perhaps, than anything modern times has to offer.
Perhaps in modern times it’s a superficial attitude so well described in Mike Judge’s Office Space that holds American eaters so well. Pieces of flair should be adorned by wait-staff. Buttons with witty sayings, words displaying such gems as: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Is it Friday yet >the buttoned face with a tired gaze< or a white and black face that reads, How am I doing?
America: I have to ask this.
Do we really want attitude or flair when going out to eat?
Do we really need to see a cardboard reenactment of old cartoons plastered on a wall to gain our attention?
Don’t we just want simple friendly service and food that is better than we can cook for ourselves by adding seasonings on our very own grills or in our own kitchens?
Times get tougher further still.
Not so long ago, we had family style restaurants to run to for Comfort Food.
I know that in my segment of this globe, there use to be hundreds of places where a person could get a home-cooked style food breakfast, lunch or dinner. I sincerely am not exaggerating on this, there were hundreds around a ten mile radius of my home. In the last 5 years or so, most of their creators dreams died after many a year of success after them cutting back to simply doing breakfast and lunch before their glass paned doors forever closed for good.
I have to ask: Why is that? Most of these places could make a meal cheaper and, in most cases, better, than could be performed by us.
I guess the real answer is the ‘trickle down’ effect. When a large local company down-sizes or shuts down, it has a cascading effect that, like a single drop of water on a still pond, spreads waves of disturbance across a once calm surface of the lake it lays upon.
If coming to Cleveland Ohio, USA, as far as 24 hour food-troughs, we have left to date: >>> and I hear arm-fart trumpets blasting with this proclamation<<<: 4 of standing!
These magnificent places should stand proud above and most tall! Denny’s (staying as big as when I remember them in the late seventies/early eighties when I my eldest sister took me there. She is eight years older than me and would meet me behind dads garage at 1120 pm for dinner. We‘d go and she‘d treat me to a British Burger and and choc shake) , Steak and Shake (the realitive newcommer here, about 5-6 years) My Friends (11616 Detroit rd, formerly known as Vienna Deli lasting from the 1980‘s and holding strong) and Steve’s Hot Dogs, 5004 Lorain Rd or at the Biddulph Ridge shopping plaza. Steve’s has been around since the 70’s, perhaps earlier. Good food at fair price. This place can fill you happily on the smaller end of cash with good service and make you feel glad you did. Not many places, at least with me, I could hold so high a place.
There was a place called Luna’s on the Parma/Parma Hts border just east of the Pearl rd and York rd borders. Lunas was a marvelous place that for at least a decade smashed the 24 barracade and graciously fed people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. A mere slender passing time period ago, at any hour, you could happily stroll into this land of killer/over the top rich decadent deserts seldom found anywhere during any hour of the day, much less at 4:30AM in the morning and have Matzah ball soup served fresh.
Kosher?
Luna’s always did. I’m sure they still do.
I miss them in the a 24 hour area….
Seriously, on the west side of Cleveland Ohio, where the righteous hell can a gentile get a good bowl of soup since Luna’s killed 24/7 operations? No where. Luna’s is Greek in origin, but holds a belief in community and likings of its area. Best Matzah ball soup on the West side of Cleveland< albeit somewhat south of Cleveland-proper down a ways a bit from off Rt42 and Archwood avenue.>>
There was an Italian restaurant in Solon Ohio. Nice place, generous in garlic buttered bread building a second tier smoking area for its patrons. FAIL! This plot of land now up for sale.
Location. Location, location location… But this place had both, adjacent to an Oriental restaurant of high acclaim and a Mr. Chicken on the other end. Such a mixture of scents filled the nostrils of on the corner of Rt 91 and 43 in Ohio.
Stuck for long enough by calculated red-lights, your olfactory senses would be blended by creations of Arby’s, Boston Market, Mr Chicken, and Imperial Wok. Downshift, your nose might be caught by one of the few McDonalds remaining that has no drive-thru and the garlic tainted exhaust of Pizza hut.
All Fastfood places are hiring here. Most of the serious places to eat as well.
No lack of places to eat in Northeastern Ohio.
But where do you wish to spread your hard earned cash?
I’d like to say most think before they spend, but I am an idiot. Humans can and will find rationalizations for every aspect of their being.
Even Jews do this around xmas. Why shouldn’t they be any different than Gentiles on this?
To make some happy at cheapy cost…..
Let peace ring out.
I know damned well it won’t.
Nest entry will be my version of the first Noel.
Mark William Darus.
12102012
Death of Hostess bakery and other American things.
By Mark William Darus.
Well, the Hostess upper echelon didn’t get monster bonuses for trashing the best bakery in America, but they got bonuses all the same!
Nice.
Wouldn’t it be nice if their employees, the rank and file, received bonuses for their years/decades of loyal servitude keeping an American mass bakery tradition alive?
What a great Xmas seasons all these folks are going to have this year!
Missing Ho Ho’s, forgetting about Beefsteak Rye, Home Pride and Wonderbread, I began to wonder how would purchase Hostess’ recipes and processes for those wondrous products and remake them exactly the same way.
I believe Hostess will not sell any of those things.
They will simply start the company over again under another, yet to be promoted flag and simply hire cheap labor to produce them. And why shouldn’t they? Plenty of other companies here have tried such cost-cutting measures.
Look at Circuit City <1949-2007> and their last attempt to cut costs and stay afloat: Fire all experienced hourly employees making good wages and hire part timers to replace them. (okay, this is a poor analogy at best. CC didn’t create anything except dismally poor Public Relations with this announcement and it only bolstered their stock for a few days. The company collapsed soon after.
I have to give CC credit though. They at least had the balls/tits to go public with their plan instead of having it hit the media via disgruntled employees and such.
More recently, besides the Hostess massacre, let’s look at Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants, owned by Darden Restaurants Inc. After receiving some serious backlash over their stance of chucking some 75% of its full time help for part timers as a result of the new medical benefit requirements, announced on 5 Dec 2012, they were going to rethink and reverse this stance for the time being.
Go figure they’d say this: It is the Xmas shopping season and more people, more families, will Eat-Out this time of year than any other. C’mon, do you really want to spend money at a place that says their gonna cut your sons, daughter <a single mom> hours to zippo? Right before Xmas no less…
I think they’ll do their choppin’ after all the shoppin’ is done this year. They’re just trying to save face at this point and not kill their business for the holidays.
I prefer steak, but those chains bit the dust long ago or simply re-flagged under a banner that never quite did as well historically. Brown Derby, Mountain Jacks, York Steak House and Ponderosa died over time. Brown Derby re-flagged Brown Derby Roadhouse, but never has nailed the restaurant share of the market it once proudly held. A pity, oh well.
Texas Roadhouse is alive and well. Founded by a man that started for Kentucky Fried Chicken, known know as KFC, back in the days when restaurants called Kenny Kings were alive and well. Apparently, besides learning cooking skills, he must have frequented a restaurant called the Ground Round. One of the biggest signatures of the Texas Roadhouse chain a bucket of shelled peanuts at every table.
TRH is okay, but to me fails compared to the old Brown Derby. Something about Brown Derby, perhaps my memories of youth in building things larger than life made it different, less tacky perhaps, than anything modern times has to offer.
Perhaps in modern times it’s a superficial attitude so well described in Mike Judge’s Office Space that holds American eaters so well. Pieces of flair should be adorned by wait-staff. Buttons with witty sayings, words displaying such gems as: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Is it Friday yet >the buttoned face with a tired gaze< or a white and black face that reads, How am I doing?
America: I have to ask this.
Do we really want attitude or flair when going out to eat?
Do we really need to see a cardboard reenactment of old cartoons plastered on a wall to gain our attention?
Don’t we just want simple friendly service and food that is better than we can cook for ourselves by adding seasonings on our very own grills or in our own kitchens?
Times get tougher further still.
Not so long ago, we had family style restaurants to run to for Comfort Food.
I know that in my segment of this globe, there use to be hundreds of places where a person could get a home-cooked style food breakfast, lunch or dinner. I sincerely am not exaggerating on this, there were hundreds around a ten mile radius of my home. In the last 5 years or so, most of their creators dreams died after many a year of success after them cutting back to simply doing breakfast and lunch before their glass paned doors forever closed for good.
I have to ask: Why is that? Most of these places could make a meal cheaper and, in most cases, better, than could be performed by us.
I guess the real answer is the ‘trickle down’ effect. When a large local company down-sizes or shuts down, it has a cascading effect that, like a single drop of water on a still pond, spreads waves of disturbance across a once calm surface of the lake it lays upon.
If coming to Cleveland Ohio, USA, as far as 24 hour food-troughs, we have left to date: >>> and I hear arm-fart trumpets blasting with this proclamation<<<: 4 of standing!
These magnificent places should stand proud above and most tall! Denny’s (staying as big as when I remember them in the late seventies/early eighties when I my eldest sister took me there. She is eight years older than me and would meet me behind dads garage at 1120 pm for dinner. We‘d go and she‘d treat me to a British Burger and and choc shake) , Steak and Shake (the realitive newcommer here, about 5-6 years) My Friends (11616 Detroit rd, formerly known as Vienna Deli lasting from the 1980‘s and holding strong) and Steve’s Hot Dogs, 5004 Lorain Rd or at the Biddulph Ridge shopping plaza. Steve’s has been around since the 70’s, perhaps earlier. Good food at fair price. This place can fill you happily on the smaller end of cash with good service and make you feel glad you did. Not many places, at least with me, I could hold so high a place.
There was a place called Luna’s on the Parma/Parma Hts border just east of the Pearl rd and York rd borders. Lunas was a marvelous place that for at least a decade smashed the 24 barracade and graciously fed people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. A mere slender passing time period ago, at any hour, you could happily stroll into this land of killer/over the top rich decadent deserts seldom found anywhere during any hour of the day, much less at 4:30AM in the morning and have Matzah ball soup served fresh.
Kosher?
Luna’s always did. I’m sure they still do.
I miss them in the a 24 hour area….
Seriously, on the west side of Cleveland Ohio, where the righteous hell can a gentile get a good bowl of soup since Luna’s killed 24/7 operations? No where. Luna’s is Greek in origin, but holds a belief in community and likings of its area. Best Matzah ball soup on the West side of Cleveland< albeit somewhat south of Cleveland-proper down a ways a bit from off Rt42 and Archwood avenue.>>
There was an Italian restaurant in Solon Ohio. Nice place, generous in garlic buttered bread building a second tier smoking area for its patrons. FAIL! This plot of land now up for sale.
Location. Location, location location… But this place had both, adjacent to an Oriental restaurant of high acclaim and a Mr. Chicken on the other end. Such a mixture of scents filled the nostrils of on the corner of Rt 91 and 43 in Ohio.
Stuck for long enough by calculated red-lights, your olfactory senses would be blended by creations of Arby’s, Boston Market, Mr Chicken, and Imperial Wok. Downshift, your nose might be caught by one of the few McDonalds remaining that has no drive-thru and the garlic tainted exhaust of Pizza hut.
All Fastfood places are hiring here. Most of the serious places to eat as well.
No lack of places to eat in Northeastern Ohio.
But where do you wish to spread your hard earned cash?
I’d like to say most think before they spend, but I am an idiot. Humans can and will find rationalizations for every aspect of their being.
Even Jews do this around xmas. Why shouldn’t they be any different than Gentiles on this?
To make some happy at cheap cost….. AMERICA! Sorry, but I learned how to make candles when I was twelve yrs old. Granted, I also learned, at the same time, to make plastic explosives and had mom own mother blow a picnic table to toothpicks as she thought a late RC car would just sprint from an outdoor table and crash. Sorry, she did as I said and an entire backyard pine table went schrapnel, and the cops were never called.
Let peace ring out to all readers of this blog from the many nations that propels it.
Next entry, this entry will be a surprise.
Mark William Darus.
12102012
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