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Snack-maker Lance Inc. said Tuesday that it will soon start making Stella D'oro brand cookies and breadsticks, bringing into its growing snack empire the products of a 78-year-old New York bakery that recently encountered labor trouble.
Lance said it is buying the brands of Stella D'oro Biscuit Co. products – which include Italian-inspired breadsticks, cookies, fudge and biscotti – and producing them at its Ashland, Ohio, bakery. The Bronx plant where the snacks are now made announced it planned to shut this fall, leaving 130 workers unemployed.
“We are excited about the opportunity to add the Stella D'oro brand to our growing portfolio of niche snack food brands,” Lance CEO David Singer said in a statement. “We believe the additional resources that can be provided under the Lance umbrella will help this iconic brand achieve renewed growth.”
Charlotte-based Lance plans to close on the deal, including the purchase of machinery and inventory, early in the fourth quarter. Terms were not disclosed.
Founded in 1932 by an Italian immigrant, Stella D'oro was sold in 1992 to Nabisco and then to Kraft. Brynwood Partners, a Greenwich, Conn., private equity firm, bought the bakery in 2006.
Workers spent 10 months on strike after owners said they wanted to cut wages and benefits to make the factory profitable. A federal judge found the company improperly refused to bargain with the union and ordered the workers back. In July, about two weeks after inviting workers back, the company announced it would close the factory in October.
Charlotte-based Lance's second-quarter earnings more than tripled, the company said in July – a feat the company credited to increased advertising and its acquisition last year of Archway Cookies. Branded products account for a growing proportion of Lance's sales. Branded products during the second quarter made up about 59 percent of sales, about 5 percent more than the same quarter last year.
The company is quadrupling the size of its corporate office and moving its headquarters into more than 50,000 square feet in the Harris building in Ballantyne Corporate Park.
