When Twinkies disappeared from American shelves in November 2012, 18,500 Hostess workers lost their jobs and the last su...

When Twinkies disappeared from American shelves in November 2012, 18,500 Hostess workers lost their jobs and the last surviving packages became collector's items. The brand that had been a staple of American childhood for decades was gone. The man who brought it back was born on a farm in Tripoli, Arcadia. Dean Metropoulos emigrated to Massachusetts at age ten with his family, worked a landscaping business through high school, and earned two degrees from Babson College. By 25 he was financial director of GTE International across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, working out of Geneva. He went on to build a career buying American consumer brands that had lost steam but kept a loyal following, including Bumble Bee, Chef Boyardee, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Hostess was in a different category entirely. In April 2013, Metropoulos teamed up with Apollo Global Management and paid $410 million for the Twinkies brand, CupCakes, Ho Hos, and several production plants. They relaunched with a leaner workforce and a restructured operating model, betting that the emotional attachment Americans had to those products was still alive. They were right. In July 2013, after about eight months off shelves, Twinkies came back to store queues and purchase limits. The publicity was worth more than any advertising campaign could have generated. A kid who grew up on a farm in the Peloponnese had just resurrected one of the most recognizable food brands in American history. Metropoulos has since built one of the more quietly influential investment records in the consumer goods world, but the Twinkies story remains the clearest example of his approach: find the brands people love, even when the business behind them has collapsed, and bet on the emotional bond outlasting the bankruptcy. #GreekDiaspora #AmericanDream #Greece