Title: Forbes, May 4, 2015 (III)

bridged

Steven Bertoni, The Twinkie Miracle; With ingenuity, capital and a little creative chemistry, billionaire C Dean Metropoulos and Apollo Global's Andy Jhawar rescued one of America's most beloved snacks--and set themselves up to feast on $2 billion gain (cover story_.
www.forbes.com/sites/stevenberto ... ulos-apollo-jhawar/

Note:
(a)
(i) C Dean Metropoulos
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Dean_Metropoulos
(1946- ; owned Pabst Brewing Co 2010 [purchased for ~$250m] -2014)
(ii) Andy S Jhawar (c 1972- ; University: Harvard MBA (1999), BS Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

(b) "Tight rows of Twinkies march along the $20 million Auto Bake system with the precision of Soviet soldiers in a May Day parade. Yellow robotic arms, which look like they should be welding Teslas rather than boxing Twinkies, stack snacks with hypnotic rhythm. This 500-person plant produces more than 1 million Twinkies a day, 400 million a year. That’s 80% of Hostess’ total  output–output that under the old regime required 14 plants and 9,000 employees. And it’s about to get more efficient: Metropoulos and Jhawar just installed a second Auto–Bake system, this one for Cup Cakes, and the governor is here to cut the ribbon."
(i) Hostess Brands "is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri."  Wikipedia
(ii) About Us. Auto Bake, undated
www.auto-bake.com/home/
("he company has been in the business of baking since the 1950s, when founder Kevin Hicks built his first bakery in Melbourne, Australia. * * * Our experience in space-saving automatic cookie machinery led us to develop the ultra compact, ultra energy and labour efficient, and ultra flexible Serpentine oven — a patented technology suitable to the widest range of savoury and sweet baked goods, where products in the baking zone are conveyed horizontally through an ingenious ‘S’ path over multiple levels [a graphic]")
(iii) Auto-Bake Core Technology. YouTube.com, published by Auto-Bake on May 30, 2012 (length: 6' 34").
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWJOuHECRY

(c) "It looked like Hostess, a Frankenfood fossil from a chop-and-potato-era that nutritionists would like to forget, had finally hit its expiration date."

It is usually pork chop and potato, but can be lamb chop and potato.

(d) "Acquire they did, plunking down $410 million for the cake brands and promising to inject another $250 million to rehabilitate the business. Now, just two years after buying the shuttered company, they sit atop what will likely be a $2 billion win. * * * 'People walk up and thank me for bringing back Twinkies,' says Metropoulos, who has previously rebuilt brands like Bumble Bee Tuna, Chef Boyardee and Pabst Blue Ribbon. 'No one ever thanked me for saving Vlasic pickles.' "
(i) Vlašić
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlašić
(a surname that means "Romanian;"  Vlasic can refer to "Vlasic Pickles [founder was from Croatia; pickle was Polish], a company specializing in pickled products")
(ii) The Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian surname Vlasic denotes "child of the ethnic name Vlah ‘Wallachian,' ‘Romanian.' "
(iii) For Wallachians, see Vlachs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs
(section 1 Etymology)

They formed, among other political entities, Wallachia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallachia
(Principality of Wallachia 1330-1859)

(e) "When Andy Jhawar heard of the Hostess liquidation, his first call was to C Dean Metropoulos, a 68–year-old specialist in turning battered food brands into tidy profits. Over 35 years he had rehabbed dozens of businesses, from PAM cooking spray to Pabst Blue Ribbon * * * creating an estimated $2.2 billion fortune for himself. Food was in his blood: His father farmed in Greece before moving the family to Watertown, Mass. when young Dean was 10 years old. Metropoulos earned a B.A. and an MBA at Babson College, and pursued a PhD in international finance at Columbia while working at General Telephone & Electronics (which would merge with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon). He decided he liked business better than books, ditching Columbia for a real–world PhD at GTE’s European unit. * * * About a decade later [Metropoulos's sons] Evan and Daren persuaded Dad to purchase hipster beer brewer Pabst. The sons served as co-CEOs. In 2014 the family sold it to Oasis Beverage for an estimated $750 million–tripling their money in three years. * * * [For the Hostess deal] Apollo put in about $140 million in equity, Metropoulos $40 million–a $500 million debt offering covered the rest. * * * They expected others to enter the auction. No one else bid. * * * says Jhawar[:] “We saw the opposite–this was an opportunity to take a great brand and for the first time be able to reinvent it.' * * * [the new owners bought] massive, new $20 million Auto Bakers * * * Next came a $25 million SAP software system to manage inventory and logistics. * * * [Conventional wisdom] values Hostess north of $2.5 billion. Take out what’s left of the $500 million they borrowed to buy the company and Metropoulos and Apollo–if all goes according to plan–could make $2 billion on a $180 million equity investment in just two years. * * * several sources say he and Apollo are already shopping the company. Pitch books filled with comps like Hershey’s and Mondelez went out to a handful of major players"

comp (n; short for complimentary)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comp