Bite into a Thomasâ?? English muffin and, it turns out, you are about to swallow one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of baking.
A tight lid is kept on the recipe for Thomas' English muffins.
Packages of Thomas' English muffins promote the trademark nooks and crannies.
The company that owns the Thomasâ?? brand says that only seven people know how the muffins get their trademark tracery of air pockets â?? marketed as nooks and crannies â?? and it has gone to court to keep a tight lid on the secret.
That leaves one of the seven, Chris Botticella, out of a job â?? and at the center of a corporate spectacle involving top-secret recipe files, allegations of clandestine computer downloads and an extreme claim of culinary disloyalty: dumping English muffins for Twinkies and Ho Hos.
Mr. Botticella, 56, delved into the mystery of Thomasâ?? muffinhood (hint: it has nothing to do with the fork), after Bimbo Bakeries USA bought the brand early last year. At the time, Mr. Botticella was a Bimbo vice president in charge of bakery operations in California.
But he left the company in January, apparently allowing co-workers to believe he was retiring. But he had accepted a job with the rival baker Hostess Brands, which years ago had tried to crack the muffin code.
Bimbo obtained a federal court order barring the move, and late last month an appeals panel in Pennsylvania upheld the order. Mr. Botticella is now contemplating his next legal move, his lawyer, Elizabeth K. Ainslie, said.
Neither Mr. Botticella nor a Bimbo spokesman would comment for this article, but the legal papers in the case suggest a muffin culture more reminiscent of Langley than Drury Lane. Recipe manuals are called code books. Valuable information is compartmentalized to keep it from leaking out. Corporate officials speak of sharing information on a â??need-to-know basis.â?
According to Bimboâ??s filings, the secret of the nooks and crannies was split into several pieces to make it more secure, and to protect the approximately $500 million in yearly muffin sales. They included the basic recipe, the moisture level of the muffin mixture, the equipment used and the way the product was baked. While many Bimbo employees may have known one or more pieces of the puzzle, only seven knew every step.
â??Most employees possess information only directly relevant to their assigned task,â? Daniel P. Babin, a Bimbo senior vice president, said in a written court declaration, â??and very few employees, such as Botticella, possess all of the knowledge necessary to produce a finished product.â?
The company claimed that Mr. Botticella had access to many more secrets as well, including sales and production plans, labor agreements and key financial information. And Bimbo suspected that he meant to share at least some of it with his new employer, something Mr. Botticella denied in his own court filings.
Mr. Botticella, who lives in Southern California, has worked in the baking business for nearly four decades, spending the last eight years with Bimbo USA, the American division of the Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo.
After Bimbo bought Thomasâ?? in January 2009, Mr. Botticella became responsible for an English muffin factory in Placentia, Calif. That March, apparently as a condition for entering the ranks of the nook and cranny cognoscenti, the company had him sign a confidentiality agreement. It barred him from revealing company secrets, but did not prohibit him from going to work for a competitor.
At about the same time, according to papers filed by Mr. Botticellaâ??s lawyers, the company embarked on a broad cost-cutting drive. It involved plant closings and layoffs, and the papers say he found the process painful and became unhappy in his job.
Last October, he accepted a job offer from Hostess to run its Eastern operations. The salary was $200,000 a year, $50,000 less than he was paid at Bimbo.
But he did not start right away.
Instead, he arranged to begin his new job in January (in court papers he said he wanted to claim his year-end bonus from Bimbo). But he told no one at Bimbo of his plans and continued to attend meetings and receive documents where confidential company information was discussed.
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