12 Mar The Pride of Philadelphia: Tasty Baking
BCTGM Local 492 (Philadelphia) members take tremendous pride in Tasty Baking Company’s rich heritage and bright future. Tasty Baking products have been well known throughout the company’s nearly 100 year history for consistent taste, quality, and freshness. And in 2010, the BCTGM Union Label brought added quality to every product made at the company’s Philadelphia bakery.
In 1914, a Pittsburgh baker, Philip J. Baur, and a Boston egg salesman, Herbert T. Morris, went into business in Philadelphia to produce baked goods using only the finest ingredients delivered fresh daily to the bakery. They insisted on farm fresh eggs, Grade A creamery butter, real milk, cocoa, spices, and natural flavorings.
The products were so good that Morris’ wife, after trying some of the samples, said they were “tasty,” so they eventually named the business Tasty Baking Company and came up with the catchy name, Tastykake.
At ten cents a cake, Morris sold $28 worth the first day, $222 the first week. By the end of 1914, gross sales were $300,000.Machinery was built, employees were hired, and routes were expanded. Chocolate Juniors were the first new product developed, then they put in electric ovens for cupcakes. By 1918, sales reached $1 million. By 1930, with the introduction of Butterscotch Krimpets and the expansion to five buildings, Tastykake was selling $6 million worth of these new snack cakes. Krimpets and cupcakes were the two best sellers at two packs for a nickel.
In the 1930s, as Americans looked toward economy, Tasty Baking Company came up with a revolution: individually packaged lunchbox-sized pies. And at a nickel each, they became immediate hits.
Workers at Tasty Baking were without union representation throughout the company’s history until they voted to become members of BCTGM Local 492 in August 2010.
“We take tremendous pride in the quality products we produce and the BCTGM Union Label is proudly displayed on all goods that are baked in Philadelphia,” notes BCTGM Local 492 Tasty Baking Chief Shop Steward Greg Sadowski, who sent the photos of Local 492 members at work in the Philadelphia bakery featured here to the BCTGM NEWS.
- It would take 14,080 Tastykake individual pies laid end to end to form a mile.
- If one chicken were to lay all of the eggs used for one day of production at Tastykake, it would take that chicken 572 years to lay enough eggs.
- To build a 3-foot wide sidewalk of Butterscotch Krimpets from Center City, Philadelphia to Atlantic City you would need 30,412,800 Krimpets.
- To completely cover the Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey rink (60’ x 200’), it would take 172,800 Tastykake Juniors.
- Tastykake’s oven is half the length, 150 feet long, of a regulation football field (300 ft).
- Tastykake bakes 250,000 pies each day.
- You could make almost 8 million peanut butter sandwiches with the same amount of peanut butter that is used in Kandy Kakes in a year.
- Tastykake products use sugar cane and cocoa from Africa’s Ivory Coast; Vanilla from Madagascar; Cinnamon from Indonesia; Nutmeg from the East and West Indies and Banana Puree from Ecuador.
- The first day of operations in 1914, Tastykake bakers produced 100 cakes. Today, they bake over 4.8 million cakes, donuts, cookies, and pies each day.
This story was first published in the January/February 2012 Issue of the BCTGM News. Click here to download the issue and see more photos of our members at Tasty Baking, Local 492!