Interstate Bakeries warns of cutback

Bankrupt Interstate Bakeries Corp., which manufactures iconic American foods such as Wonder Bread and Hostess snack cakes, has sent out a letter to some of its wholesale customers indicating it has decided to withdraw distribution of certain products from “a large number of accounts throughout New England.”

Jason Booth, a spokesman for IBC, was contacted Tuesday about the letter but did not offer any comment or elaboration on its contents.

The letter, dated July 15 but received by Maine businesses last week, is signed by Chuck Mackin, whose title on the letter is listed as “area sales manager” in the Biddeford office of Interstate Brands Corp., a subsidiary of Interstate Bakeries.

Attempts Monday and Tuesday to contact Mackin at IBC’s J.J. Nissen plant in Biddeford were unsuccessful.

Last week, IBC said it had not yet made any decisions about which wholesale customers it might drop from its delivery routes in the Northeast.

Interstate Bakeries Corp. filed for bankruptcy last September. Based in Kansas City, Mo., the company already has announced that it is restructuring its Northeast operations and plans to eliminate 1,400 jobs in the region, including 150 of 660 jobs at its Biddeford plant. It also plans to close its plant in New Bedford, Mass.

IBC manufactures and distributes Hostess, Wonder, Drake’s, J.J Nissen, Sunbeam, Merita, and other well-known brands of breads and snack cakes. The letter indicates IBC will stop delivering Wonder, J.J. Nissen, Hostess and Drake’s products to affected customers.

IBC lost $24 million in April, the largest one-month loss since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall. The prior low point was $14.5 million in December.

Curt O’Hara, director of retail programs for Associated Grocers of New England in Manchester, N.H., said Tuesday that only two of the 400 or so stores his organization serves have been affected by IBC’s delivery cutbacks. He said the two affected stores are in northern New Hampshire, but he declined to say where exactly they are located.

IBC’s overall reductions may affect food service programs and production of baked goods for non-IBC companies more than it does retail stores, according to O’Hara. He said he had spoken to IBC officials about how IBC was restructuring itself in the region.

“A lot of cutbacks were in the institutional side,” he said.

Officials with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union that represents IBC workers, have expressed reluctant support for reducing the company’s delivery routes. Such a move will help keep the company afloat and will preserve as many IBC jobs as possible, they have said.

Bruce Mathews, who owns C.H. Mathews store in Cherryfield, received a copy of the letter from IBC late last week. The letter indicates IBC will stop delivering to his store, which is affiliated with Associated Grocers of Maine, in mid-August.

“It’s sad, but what are you going to do?” Mathews said Monday.

He said the timing of IBC’s withdrawal, when tourists and blueberry workers flock to Down East Maine, will have an adverse effect on his business. He expressed skepticism that IBC will right itself financially by delivering only to larger stores and other clients.

“I don’t think they’re going to survive that way either,” Mathews said.

Bob Duran, owner of C&K Variety markets in Hermon and Levant and of Country Market in Hermon, said Monday he has not received any such letter. He said that if he had to stop selling Drake’s and other snack cakes, which are popular at his stores, it would be bad for his businesses.

“I don’t know who else there is, to tell the truth,” Duran said. “Who else makes Twinkies?”