Tandy cake snack-sized, prepackaged desserts are diverse. First, Baur and Morris had opened a bakery in the Pittsburgh area, selling it to the Ward Baking Company in 1913.
300,000 in sales by the end of 1914. Sales began to expand throughout Eastern Pennsylvania. Philip Baur died in 1951, his heirs purchased stock from Herbert Morris’ wife, giving the Baur family majority control of the company. Kaiser became president, and Morris, who had served as president since the company’s inception, became chairman of the board. In April 1954, Kaiser was able to report that the Tastykake territory had grown to cover parts of nine states and the District of Columbia. In 1959, a group from Philadelphia who referred to themselves as the 400 ministers, formulated a new strategy for using black consumer power, rather than the city’s liberal civil rights networks, to press private employers to improve job opportunities for black workers. The local branch had approached the management of Tastykake, about employing black workers in the lucrative position of “driver-salesman.
Driver-salesmen both drove the company’s’ delivery trucks and sold the company’s goods to grocery stores and other retail outlets and thus were able to earn lucrative commissions on top of their salaries. On June 16, the ministers announced that Tastykake was to be the target of the first selective patronage campaign and that Rev. Sullivan would serve as spokesperson and chief negotiator for the campaign. Tastykake was known for hiring a large number of black workers, even though it restricted them to certain production departments and was rumored to require them to use segregated restroom and locker facilities. In 1927 Tastykake introduced its Butterscotch Krimpet and soon thereafter a line of individually wrapped fruit and cream pies, all of which were bundled in wax-paper, a tradition that lasted into the 1960s. The Tandy-Kake, first on the market in 1931, later became the Kandy Kake, the most popular cake in the company’s history, with nearly half a million baked and packaged each day. In the 1970s and 80s, Tastykake sought to respond to the changing demographics and aging population of the region.
A flurry of new product development added muffins, chocolate-covered pretzels, and pastries. Despite being a predominantly regional product, the company obtained ingredients from around the world, including sugarcane 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. In May 2007, Tasty Baking announced it would move its headquarters and main bakery to the Philadelphia Naval Business Center in South Philadelphia. The new bakery is located on South 26th Street, with the headquarters on Crescent Drive. The Tasty Baking Company went public on the NYSE in 1961 under the ticker symbol TBC.
On October 21, 2005, the company transitioned to the NASDAQ National Market and changed their ticker symbol to TSTY. A Tastykake delivery van on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pa. This move came after a 7. 61 per share at the end of the previous trading day. This section appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture.
Tastykake has been a longtime sponsor of the Philadelphia Flyers, who award a case of their desserts whenever a Flyer scored. Tastykake has also been a longtime sponsor of Philadelphia Phillies broadcasts. Tastykakes had been delivered to the booth between innings. Author Janet Evanovich features Tastykakes in her mystery novels about Stephanie Plum, all of which are set in Trenton, New Jersey. In Jerry Spinelli’s young adult novel Maniac Magee, the main character, Jeffrey Lionel “Maniac” Magee, enjoys eating Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets. Tastykake owns the naming rights of local sports talk radio station 94.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard mentioned Tastykake in his song “Brooklyn Zoo” saying, “As I create, rhymes good as a Tastykake. In the 1970’s, actress Betty White starred in multiple television commercials for Tastykake. Customer Service Archived 2009-09-06 at the Wayback Machine. Tasty Baking to sell Philadelphia bakery, former offices and distribution centre. Seventy-Five Years of Good Taste: A History of The Tasty Baking Company 1914-1989. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.