Place: Cici's Pizza
Lunch: Buffet, Pepsi
I saw a Cici's commercial the other night where they were hyping the buffet for "only $5.00 for a limited time". First off, the regular buffet price at this location is $4.99. Second, it's recently been $2.99 with the purchase of a drink. So the commercial makes no sense.
The $2.99 price is driving traffic. I haven't seen this place this busy in a year or two.
If you didn't think the world was in trouble before, you should now. In a world where the parent company of Twinkies goes out of business, something is seriously wrong.
Hostess announced it's winding down its business. The final straw was the inability to settle with striking union workers. The company has been in bankruptcy (more than once, historically) for awhile now. No more Twinkies, CupCakes, Sno-Balls, Donettes, Wonder Bread, or even Dolly Madison products.
Twitter users, of course, are all over this...
"Hostess is shutting down right when marijuana is getting legalized? Well that's just not right." - @ZBeebs42
"Worst part about Hostess going out of business is now there's nothing to eat to cope with Hostess going out of business." - @rejectedjokes
Then you have the health Nazi's dancing in the street, and the organic crowd pointing everyone to "real bakeries with real baked goods".
Settle down, hippies.
This reminds me of my youth when the workers of a local spruce mill went on strike amidst threats from the parent company that it would result in the permanent shutdown of the mill. The strike happened, the mill shut down, and the union had two guys posted at the gate with strike signs daily for TWO YEARS before deciding the company was actually serious and giving up.
I don't think the Hostess thing will be quite as dramatic.
Hostess will sell their brands. The company who buys them will be able to start production without any existing union contracts. They won't even have to use the existing Hostess plants. Some off-brand snack cake maker could just slap the Twinkie brand on their existing knockoffs. It might not happen immediately, but it will happen.
Still, it's kind of mind-boggling it got to this point.
Truth be known, I don't buy snack cakes of any kind very often. I'll miss Wonder Bread more than anything. But I still swung by QuikTrip and grabbed a package of Twinkies this morning just for nostalgia. And chocolate CupCakes. And my personal favorite Hostess product, orange CupCakes. There was no shortage of supply. They were fully stocked with all your favorites.
They'll be enjoyed, but if it's the last of their kind for me, it's no big deal.
