I drove out that afternoon to the Wonder Hostess Bakery Outlet at 1306 Brandt Pike in Riverside. Employees there had been told the store would remain open for at least a few days in order to sell already-baked products. And like other Hostess employees, they were told not to grant interviews to reporters.
The mood inside the Brandt Pike retail bakery outlet was somber, to say the least. Employees were hugging each other, regular customers were hugging employees, and the discussion turned to how to file for unemployment benefits.
And the shelves, which a few hours earlier had been well-stocked with Twinkies and Donettes, had been ravaged by customers seeking to stock up — or perhaps to make a quick buck by selling them online.
Those customers just arriving in the mid-afternoon were disappointed that the buzzards had picked the carcass clean. But the employees, who were about to be jobless, were still at their stations, doing their jobs as they’d done for years.
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