Urgent: Mother S Cookies

Mother’s Cookies Oakland institution since 1914 shutting down
The owners did not comply with the federal law that requires a 60-day notification of any layoffs and said that was due to “unforeseeable business circumstances.”

About 230 employees of Mother’s Cookies found out Friday that their jobs were crumbling when company officials announced that baking and distribution now done in Oakland was being shifted to plants in Canada and Ohio.

Villarreal said the closure was announced by Paul West, vice president of manufacturing for Archway & Mother’s Cookie Co., which is headquartered in Battle Creek, Mich.

In 2006, Mother’s Cake & Cookie Co. was uprooted from its plant on 81st Avenue in Oakland and relocated.

“But, as you know, the credit environment is very difficult now,” said Meaghan Repko, a spokeswoman for the owners, in New York.

In 2000, Specialty sold Mother’s and another brand, Archway Cookies, to the Italian firm Parmalat Finanziaria, for a reported $250 million.

“It’s going to be devastating,” said Aliza Gallo, a business development official for the city of Oakland.

The ending was abrupt: Workers for the company, which shifted its baking and distribution operations to plants in Ohio and Canada in 2006, told workers Friday that operations would cease and cookies would no longer be made as of Monday.

A company spokesman said no plans have been made to dispose of the company’s real estate, which city officials would like to keep available for some other food-processing operation.

As Villarreal recalled, West told workers that the company, which has passed through a series of corporate owners in recent years, “could not keep competing with the cookie monsters” and retain its flagship location in Oakland.

The company cited rising prices for raw materials and fuel, and on Monday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

It was owned by Catterton Partners, a private-equity firm in Greenwich, Conn., which in 2005 purchased it from an Italian firm, Parmalat Finanziaria, which was plagued by scandals at home.

Mother’s was founded 92 years ago in Oakland by a former newspaper peddler who parlayed a cookie recipe into a company.

Mother’s later had a series of corporate owners: a Belgian company, Artal B.V., bought it in 1991; it was owned by Specialty Foods Corp. of Illinois in the late 1990s; in 2000, Specialty sold Mother’s and Archway Cookies to Parmalat, which in turn sold the combined business to Catterton for an undisclosed sum.

A spokesman said workers who lose their jobs in the closure will be eligible for severance pay worth between two weeks and 12 weeks depending on how long they’ve worked for the company.

Sixty people are out of work at the Battle Creek office, and Battle Creek City Attorney Eileen Wicklund said Wednesday that she had advised workers to explore a lawsuit against the company.

Catterton said in a statement it “took a number of actions to remedy” the company’s financial crisis, “but these actions were not sufficient to overcome the losses and return Mother’s Cake & Cookie Co. and Archway Cookies LLC to profitability.”