Hostess Brands

Interstate Bakeries and Interstate Brands

The company has its roots in Nafziger Bakeries, founded by Ralph Leroy Nafziger in a church basement at 6th and Prospect Avenue in Kansas City in 1905. Nafziger expanded the bakeries and bought out competitors. In 1925 he sold Nafziger to Purity Bakeries (which became American Bakeries) and acquired a controlling interest in Schulze Baking Company and its Butternut Breads brand.

In 1930 Nafziger announced the formation of the Interstate Bakeries Corporation (IBC) with the merger of Schulze Bakery and the seven bakers of Western Bakeries of Los Angeles to become the fifth largest baker in the United States. The company sold Butternut bread, wrapped in gingham, to grocery stores.

Schulze and Western continued to operate separately under the Interstate umbrella until 1937, when they merged with Interstate Bakeries. In 1943 Interstate acquired the Supreme Baking Company of Los Angeles, and in 1950 it bought the O'Rourke Baking Company of Buffalo, New York.

Acquisitions during the 1950s and early 1960s included the Ambrosia, Remar, Butter Cream, Campbell-Sell and Schall Tasty baking companies, the Kingston Cake and Cobb's Sunlit bakeries, Sweetheart Bread Company and Hart's Bakeries. In the late 1960s IBC acquired Millbrook Bread, Shawano Farms and the Baker and Shawano canning companies. In 1969 IBC changed its name to Interstate Brands, with its signature brands Butternut and Blue Seal breads and Dolly Madison cakes; Butternut Breads had been in business since 1902.

DPF (1975)