Twinkie Factory

I think most college students have "weird summer job" stories. De-tasseling corn, Green Giant creamed corn production, Eklund's tuxedo delivery, ...

Well  - here's my story.







Part 1

While a student at Augsburg College, I worked a couple summers at the Continental Baking Company, located downtown at 11 St. & 3rd Ave in Minneapolis, roughly 20 blocks from Augsburg. My motivation was to earn enough pocket money to take the girl of my dreams to Bridgeman's for Hot Fudge Banana sundaes. (Eventually, she agreed to become my wife saying if I was half as nice as my father she would marry me. She settled for considerably less.)

I rode my rickety bike to the place, which wasn't bad in the summer. 35W wasn't there, so it was a straight shot downtown on 7th St. to 3rd Ave. But I also - for a short time - worked 1 night shift a week during the school year. This had a deleterious effect on my 7:30 Computer Science class attendance. Augsburg's compSci department consisted of one Univac programmer who taught the class before going to work - hence the 7:30 start time. We submitted our homework on paper tape - just to give a reference to how long ago this was. It also meant I rode my bike downtown in the winter for the 10:00 PM - 6:00 AM shift -  and wiped out a few times. That experience and the sleep deprivation drove me to find yet another "weird job" - a future post.

This was Continental Baking's Hostess facility, a 4 story red brick building with an "Outlet Store" on the ground level, where you could purchase discount priced Twinkies. On the 2nd floor, they baked Wonder Bread, made of mostly air with a dusting of flour; and Hostess fruit pies, which were pretty good actually. The 3rd floor, where I spent my time was the assembly line for Hostess products. We called it the "Twinkie Factory" and I had to join the bakers' union to get the job.

The ingredients for all the Hostess cake products as well as the marshmallow for the Snoballs were mixed on the 4th floor. These concoctions were mixed in 300 lb aluminum bowls on wheels and transported down to the 3rd floor in a freight elevator where the ovens and the "assembly line" took over. Twinkies were baked in 30" x 18 steel pans, holding 36 (I think) Twinkies. The two ovens had 8 foot revolving shelves and the "baker's" job was to load each shelf with 6 pans before it disappeared below and then pull them out when the revolution through the oven was complete. I did this job on occasion and still have burn scars on my forearms from reaching in to get the pans in the back.

The pans were then transferred to 7' high cooling racks - on wheels, holding roughly 16 pans of baked goods - and after a proscribed cooling time, wheeled over to the assembly line. One worker fed pans of Twinkies into a machine topped by a hopper filled with "Twinkie goo". This filling was mixed on the 4th floor and transported by freight elevator. Eventually they figured out that a chute from the 4th to the 3rd would be more efficient - except for the marshmallow which lacked the basic flow properties necessary - see below. Each individual pan of Twinkies was fed into the machine which "injected" each cake with the cream filling. You might have guessed this was the process by looking at the bottom of a Twinkie. There are perforations. A second person on the other side of this injection machine took the pan, pivoted 180°, lifted the pan above his head and slammed it down onto a conveyer belt to dislodge the cake from the pan. This usually worked fine but on occasion the pans were not sufficiently "oiled" and it required several slams to remove the cake from the pan. I broke my little finger on one night shift because of this. And you got quite a workout doing this, with a pan coming through the machine about every 5 seconds.  There were times that the operator jammed the machine and broke the dies to get a rest. (I only ever did this by accident, not intentionally).

After the dump, the pan was thrown in to a "pan washer" - a wash machine with a conveyor through a spray of scalding water. The worst job in the place was at the end of the pan-washer - pulling those burning hot pans and putting them on those same cooling racks, hands protected by a pair of Wells-Lamont cloth gloves which were quickly soaking wet.  This was the first job for new-hires and if they survived a week, they moved on to more glamorous jobs, like Twinkie dumping.

Once dumped the cake moved down the conveyer to the packaging machines. Damaged cake - like those that came out in several pieces - see the above multiple slams description - went off the end of the conveyer into garbage bins. However, waste not, want not. This damaged cake served as the base for the "Spice Cake" batter.  Add enough spices and you never know you're eating Twinkies.

Hostess cupcakes followed the exact same injection procedure plus an additional step with the cake passing under a hopper which coated the cake with chocolate frosting and a vanilla drizzle.

Hostess Snoballs were more complicated.  They are the same cake as the cupcakes but they are smothered in marshmallow and coconut. When I was there - this was the process. (I think the FDA forced some changes after I left.) The Snoball process required one additional person on the conveyer line to transfer the marshmallow into the hopper over the conveyor belt. For a time I had the job of manhandling the 300 lb bowls (empty weight) of batters, chocolate, and marshmallow to the freight elevator and down to the 3rd floor. This was a just-in-time process so speed was essential. And the bowls were not that steerable so it was not uncommon to bang into the plaster walls - with the expected result. (I picked the larger chunks out of the bowl.)  The marshmallow being quite thick needed to be transferred from the bowl to the hopper - roughly 6 feet above the floor. This was done "by hand" - I am not kidding. I would scoop handfuls of the warm marshmallow from the bowl into the hopper. Uffda.  I never did put "marshmallow dipper" on my resume. There were only white during my tenure.



The Continental Baking building is no more, the business shutting down in 1987. The site now home to a Holiday Inn Express. In 2012 Hostess filed bankruptcy and it was announced Twinkies would no longer be produced, causing world-wide panic buying. (Urban legend says Twinkies have a 100 year shelf life). One of the "benefits" of the job was all the Twinkies you could eat. I haven't eaten a Twinkie in 50 years.



In 2013, out of receivership, a management company bought Hostess for $413 million and Twinkies once again appeared on the US market. A side note - in 2016 the management company sold Hostess for $2.3 billion. Twinkies roar.


Copyright © 2018 Dave Hoplin