Nooks & Crannies

Seven people knew the recipe for a half-a-billion dollar muffin. Then, one of them tried to leave. Get ad-free episodes to Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin http://apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus https://www.pushkin.fm/join-pushkin See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask Chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at ChatGPT.com.

• 0:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over

• 1:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 2:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  Hold on, let's take a little bite here.

• 2:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  One morning, not long ago, my colleague Ben Daf Hafray and I huddled in a small backroom at Pushkin Industries to solve a mystery.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  It like hits the back of your palate. There's like a funk to it. You know what I mean?

• 2:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  Through the glass wall of the room, we could see our fellow Pushkinites working on various prosaic podcasts and audiobooks, while we alone wrestled with an eternal question involving toasted bread. Just from a sensory perspective, there's a lot of crunch. Let's also not forget its size.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yes. Palmable.

• 2:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's palmable. Breakfast is the meal you make when you're barely conscious. So the breakfast table is the Super Bowl for food companies. Lunch is eaten out. Dinner, if you're lucky, is prepared from scratch. But think about breakfast. All the day lies before you, and you are in need of sustenance. You want something wholesome, but crucially, easy, a little ready-made. Breakfast foods become lifelong habits. Brands fight tooth and nail for a prime spot at that table. Many have fought valiantly. Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Pop-Tarts, Rice Krispies. But there's only one breakfast item, legendary enough, that when I take a bite, suddenly I remember my childhood.

• 3:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  Also, how my father felt about cutting the cross-saw bread. I think he, I think he viewed that as a kind of a sign of, as a kind of an defeat move, a sign of, a sign of moral weakness, moral and sort of a lack of real kind of fiber when it came to eating your food. Or Ben takes a bite, and suddenly he's off for the millionth time about Proust.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  It does have that kind of like Proustian association thing. Like, it tastes like, I remember this taste.

• 4:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  When I have this, it like, it does take me back. Like, I am seeing my family's kitchen where we would eat breakfast and like the big spread.

• 4:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  Our breakfast mystery comes in packages of six, but they cannot be eaten right out of the box. Each item inside must be split in two, then toasted, then buttered for the magic to work. And oh, the magic works. I'm talking, of course, about Thomas's English Muffins, the most iconic breakfast bread of all time.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  And for that reason, it is nearly a half a billion dollar a year in sales. Product. It is the sine qua non of bread products, baked goods.

• 4:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  The champ, undisputed.

• 4:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  What sets the Thomas's English Muffin apart from all the others? It says right there on the package, nooks and crannies. The recipe for Thomas's English Muffin has been one of the most closely held trade secrets there is, until allegedly one baking executive tried to make off with the family jewels.

• 5:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my show about things overlooked and misunderstood. Today on the show, Ben Nardaf Halfrey peers into the nooks and crannies of one of the greatest legal cases you've never heard of. It's a big story, this muffin case. Today, we're getting part one.

• 5:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  Here's Ben.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  I once hired a lawyer who dreams about suing people. He told me this on a call once. I asked for proof, and he showed me a video of himself asleep, very clearly muttering, "I'll sue you", and something to the effect of, "You're going to jail." There were some swears in there, too. My first thought was, "This man is the best lawyer I'll ever have." Second thought, "I better pay him quickly." We were going over an employment contract. We got to the part about intellectual property, and I thought the degree to which an employer could punish you if you ever divulged one of their trade secrets seemed a little crazy, to which my lawyer replied, "Well, it's nooks and crannies." And even recognizing I was paying by the second, I was like, "What did you just say?"

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Why have so many of you switched from toast to Thomas's English Muffins?

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Definitely the crannies.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  It was the nooks.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  The key to English muffin supremacy comes down to the balance of nooks, which catch and pool the melted butter and the thin, crisp walls of the crannies. But somehow, nooks and crannies are now lawyer shorthand for trade secret. Why?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Thomas's, the nooks and crannies muffin, making breakfast better for over 100 years.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  In 1874, a baker named Samuel Bath Thomas left England for the United States. Little's known about his life before he lands in New York, but he arrived with a recipe in his pocket for what typically would be called Welsh muffins or crumpets. He cooked them on a griddle so they'd be crisp on the outside and doughy yet pockmarked in the inside in a way few other breads were. Thomas's Nooks and Crannies took New York by storm. Demand skyrocketed. He opened another bakery. Then it became a corporation. Eventually, the words nooks and crannies became a registered trademark of Thomas's English Muffins. You will note, if you look at the bakery shelves at your local grocery store,

• 7:44Speaker 00

  that other English muffin brands live in fear of this fact. Dave's Killer Bread boasts of butter-catching flavor craters. Trader Joe's has pockets and crevices. Bays has raised the white flag and left the field entirely with a claim about packaging now resealable. Because all of them know better than to cross the entity that now owns Thomas's:

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Grupo Bimbo.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Did you know that your bread is owned by Mexico? CNBC's Michelle Caruso Cabrera caught up with the nation's largest bakery, Grupo Bimbo.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Grupo Bimbo, international baking conglomerate.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  Entenmann's?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Owned by a Mexican bread company. Sara Lee, bought by a Mexican bread company.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Grupo Bimbo isn't just the biggest baker in the United States. It is the biggest baker in the entire world.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Bimbo is everywhere. They've taken over half the bread brands you've heard of and 50% of the rest. They've swept through the US, acquiring one bakery after another.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  It's the first bakery with a big national footprint, and they plan to be global.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  No one stands in the way of Grupo Bimbo. And in 2009, at the height of their powers, they acquired the holy grail of baked goods: the nooks and crannies.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  Thomas's English Muffins, owned by a Mexican bread company.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  The secret recipe for nooks and crannies brought in about half a billion dollars in annual revenue to Grupo Bimbo. But then, according to Bimbo, someone tried to steal it.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Can you just tell me the, the basic facts of the case?

• 9:21Speaker 06

  Well, in this case, I guess we can go through it.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  I'm speaking with Louis Del Giudice, partner at the major law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, in a conference room high above Manhattan. This is where my lawyer sent me when I asked about cranny law. Louis is an expert in intellectual property. He says a lot of people come to him to determine if they have their own trade secrets. And he tells them, "Sit down, my friends, and let me teach you the lessons of the muffin."

• 9:51Speaker 06

  Do you know what one of the best-kept trade secrets is? And everybody thinks Coke. And I'm like, "Well, Thomas's English Muffins, which we've all grown up on, there's only 10 people in the world that know how to make a Thomas's English muffin." And people go, "What?"

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Actually, it's fewer than 10, but we'll get to that. Trade secrets are one of the pillars of IP protection in the United States, along with patents, trademarks, and copyright. But unlike the others, a trade secret never expires. And the muffin case is one of the best examples of a trade secret's power and how to protect it. Louis was not involved in the case directly, but he studied it at length. In any telling, he begins by introducing the defendant, a former Grupo Bimbo employee named Chris Botticella.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Executive officer, he's in charge of the entire West Coast of the United States, and he's privy to all this information, all the recipe books, and all of this other financial information and efficiencies. He has to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but that nondisclosure agreement's only while he's employed.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  It's 2010, the year after Grupo Bimbo acquired Thomas's. According to documents presented in court, the information required to produce a Thomas's English muffin is known by only seven people at the company. It's kept in secret code books that only a few people have access to. Baracella, as a senior executive, is one of those people. He oversees a facility in Placentia, California, where the muffins are made. He's been in the industry since he was 16 and has risen through the ranks through sheer skill, till finally, he's reached the pinnacle. Bimbo Bakery's executive of almost a decade. But lately, Chris has been unhappy.

• 11:36Speaker 06

  He had said that they had done some cost-cutting and some head-cutting, so that sort of left a bad taste in his mouth. It sounded like, from the one email that's attached to the complaint, that maybe he had a little bit of friction with his manager, you know, the guy above him. He's just like, you know, there's a line that literally says, you know, "You and I may not have always seen eye to eye, but we've always known what was best for the company." So when you read that, you know, that's a polite way of saying, "You and I used to fight a lot."

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Chris gets a job offer at Hostess, famed owner of Twinkies. One of Bimbo's only competitors, but just barely. Hostess had just gone through bankruptcy. Hostess was a possible target for Bimbo acquisition, but then Bimbo would have owned almost every baked good on the planet, and at that point, where's the fun? Chris probably knew that Grupo Bimbo wasn't going to be thrilled about the Hostess of it all, but he wants to get his year-end bonus, so he doesn't leave right away.

• 12:34Speaker 06

  So now he's sitting all through Q4 at his role at Thomas's, getting all the Q4 information, all the look-forward information for the next year, all the financials, on top of all the other knowledge he had.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Chris signs with Hostess in October. His start date is January. The weeks tick by. Chris finally announces he's leaving Bimbo, but he doesn't say he's going to a new job. Given his long tenure, his colleagues probably assume he's retiring. According to court documents, he asked about how to enroll in health coverage.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  Oh, I need Cobra, meaning like that's code word for like, I'm gonna retire almost, right?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  But then Hostess puts out a press release.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  They helped find out from Hostess's press release that he's gonna work in the next two days for Hostess.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  And Bimbo's like, oh, shit.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  We've got the 75-year-old-plus secret of how to bake Thomas's English muffins. It's a half a billion-dollar product, and he knows it.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Does Hostess have an English muffin? Not yet. Fuck. HR calls Chris.

• 13:36Speaker 06

  No, no, you weren't retiring. You were going to the hated competitor.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  This is bad. HR says, get out now.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  He got to a certain point where he knew too much, and now he's iced out.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Chris is walked out of the building. He has no idea what's coming for him, least of all that he's about to be swallowed up by the nooks and crannies. We'll be right back.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 14:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making, knowingly or unknowingly.

• 14:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today.

• 15:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends.

• 16:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app,

• 17:03Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 17:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's his first experience with high technology. Tiny, feline mind, blown. Check in on mealtime with a real-time video feed and dispense food on demand, even when you're away. In multi-cat households, the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats uses facial recognition technology to track up to five cats. Visit P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  We're going to return to the nooks and grannies, I promise. But first, we have to talk about Willy Wonka.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  So I'll start by saying that one of my favorite books as a kid was Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Jeannie Seefromer is a vice dean at the New York University Law School. She's also the Walter J. Durenberg Professor of Intellectual Property Law and a scholar of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  When my kids were younger, I was rereading the book to them. And I was struck, now that I was working in intellectual property, by how much of the story was actually driven by trade secrets in that Willy Wonka had had to shut down his factory because all of his competitors were sneaking in spies to work there so they could steal his amazing candy innovations. And he couldn't tolerate it as a business matter anymore, so he shut down.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  For those in need of a refresher, in the book, Wonka's factory has started back up, but nobody understands how. Nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out. This is why it's so exciting when Charlie gets the golden ticket to go see the inside of the factory. Nobody sees the inside of the factory.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  And so what we learn is that Willy Wonka has found the magical solution to trade secret theft by having Oompa Loompas work in the factory. Why are they the magical solution? Because they don't leave, they live there. So they're not going to be sneaking out any trade secrets. They're paid in chocolate, they're happy.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Let's not talk about some of the racist and other aspects.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  It may be in violation of some employment law, but it's...

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Jeannie's insight about the Oompa Loompas became the seed of not one, but two brilliant articles she wrote, using Willy Wonka as the skeleton key for understanding trade secrecy. Her major revelation? Willy Wonka's paranoia, the spying and extreme secrecy, was totally justified. It was essentially based on a true story. This is just part of being in the candy industry.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Everything from reading about the Mars Company, blindfolding any repair people that would come in to fix machines so they wouldn't see anything else, to spies being put into factories and guarding against that. So it felt actually very true to life, and that was a little bit shocking to me.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Trade secrecy is the part of the law where life begins to resemble Willy Wonka.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  This is the most secret machine in my entire factory. But what's it do? As you see, it makes everlasting gobstoppers.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  People love secrets from a very early age. It's why Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic children's story. It's not just the candy, it's the secrets. The world is already full of things you can't understand when you're little, and now someone's going to share the most special, true knowledge behind it all?

• 21:27Speaker 00

  But secrets are also dangerous. If I tell you a secret, it means I trust you. It binds us together, but it also alters the balance of power between us. You know something I don't want other people to know? That puts me at risk, so I need you to know it's a secret. I tell you... Don't tell anyone. Before I whisper in your ear, I put up a sign on my bedroom door saying, "Top secret, keep out." Trade secrecy works on playground rules.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  I can only give them to you if you solemnly swear to keep them for yourselves and never show them to another living soul as long as you all shall live. Agreed? Agreed.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Now imagine I'm a major corporation in the real world. I'm infinitely more powerful than you. I'm Willy Wonka and you are an Oompa Loompa. I tell you a secret, maybe one you don't even want to know. And then I say, "By the way, I have eyes everywhere. And if you breathe a word of this secret to anyone or even look as if you might breathe a word, I will destroy you." This is the crux of it. At their best, trade secrets protect valuable intellectual property from being stolen. But at their worst, they're a powerful tool for a company that wants to turn an employee into an Oompa Loompa. It used to be the easiest way to turn a human being into an Oompa Loompa was a non-compete clause.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  But Janie says that's going away.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  We've been living in a world where fast food workers have been asked to sign non-compete agreements. And, you know, historically, people understood non-compete as being for the, a small number of employees, the highest level employees, the ones with the access to the most sensitive information. And they're just being deployed as form contracts for so many workers and workers with lower incomes in ways that are keeping them in jobs that they might want to leave and go somewhere else.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  A lot of states are banning non-compete now, which is one of the reasons a company might come to Louis Del Giudice's IP expert to help identify and protect their secrets. Could you make that bit in a secret room? Can you have a black vault in the office? Could there be a secret code book?

• 23:45Speaker 06

  Because a trade secret will be the only way to stop somebody if you really think they're taking something that's proprietary to your company someplace else. Because a non-compete's not going to really be in play.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  But trade secrets can have a dangerous power.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Sometimes people are just good at what they do, and they have advantages to continue working in the same industry because they know that industry. And their business has overclaimed things as secrets, and that might prevent them from taking another job.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  Trade secrets are the only intellectual property protection that can last forever. And because of that permanence and the way we're geared to think about secrets already, they have a kind of mystical aura. In our secular, disenchanted world, they are the closest thing we have to magic. The authentic Coca-Cola formula is written on a tiny grain of rice, kept in an old, ancient chest with a curse on anyone who opens it. The most famous ones are the recipes. Coca-Cola's secret formula, KFC's 11 spices, the exact way to create Wrigley's gum. But actually, a whole lot of things can be trade secrets. Software code, financial information. You may know a trade secret and not even totally realize it.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  But a good way to recognize one is the nooks and crannies test. This feels like a good transition to me to Bimbo Bakeries versus Botticella. Can you tell me how you came across the case and how you teach it?

• 25:25Speaker 04

  I know the case through working on trade secret scholarship and teaching. It's a more recent classic, I would say.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Bimbo Bakeries versus Botticella. It seemed like every lawyer I talked to knew about the case. It wasn't a precedent so much as a legend, a piece of lore. A fairy tale warning about the Oompa Loompa who took the everlasting gobstopper out of Willy Wonka's factory and tried to sell it to a competitor. Like any good fairy tale, it's a good teaching tool because the moral's clear. Except, then I realized, the lessons of this case aren't clear at all.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 26:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and, most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction.

• 27:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The new Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about their health. My cat, Biggie Smalls, is the most demanding member of our household. He has specific mealtimes, or he lets out a massive howl. And last night, I introduced him to the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats. It took no time to set up. I downloaded the app, plugged it in,

• 28:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  filled up the feeder with delicious kibble, and watched as my cat entered the digital age. Biggie, look!

• 28:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  All curious at it, his first experience with high technology. Tiny feline mind, blown. Check in on mealtime with a real time video feed and dispense food on demand even when you're away. In multi-cat households, the Petivity Smart Feeder for Cats uses facial recognition technology to track up to five cats. Visit P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  If somehow you missed the 2017 edition of the Pennsylvania Super Lawyers Magazine, I would encourage you to look it up. Specifically, an article titled "I Can Do That" about a Pennsylvania super lawyer named Elizabeth Ainsley. Liz Ainsley is fearless. She was head of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's fraud team. As Super Lawyers Magazine puts it, quote, "Ainsley has represented whistleblowers in several major cases, defended and prosecuted high-profile RICO cases against law firms and pharmaceutical companies, defended a major national bank in a lender liability trial, and successfully defended the New York Times in a federal defamation trial." End quote. Legend.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  And yet, in that whole article, they don't mention a call she got sometime in January 2010 regarding a secret recipe for English muffins. It was a pretty small budget to begin with, so, and I was at a big firm, so there was some question about whether I could take it or not, but they let me take it. When you say let you take it, were you eager to take it? Yeah, it was an interesting case. It was kind of a David and Goliath situation. I thought people ought to be free to move from one employer to another, and Chris seemed to be out of his depth. How so? Well, he was a single person.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  And being sued by a huge corporation. Global conglomerate. Absolutely, with the deepest of pockets.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Chris Botticella, as I have mentioned, was in trouble. Bimbo Bakeries has just found out that one of seven employees who knew the secret recipe for their newly acquired and extremely valuable Thomas's English muffins was going to work for a competitor. Grupo Bimbo is one of the largest bakeries in the world. Grupo Bimbo vows to nobody. So, within days of Chris's termination, before he starts his new job at Hostess, attorneys for Bimbo file an injunction in a Pennsylvania court, which is technically where Thomas's is based, but mainly it's a way better place for them to argue the case than California. I would like to read to you from the factual allegations section of what they filed.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Items one through 10 cover the basics of the case, and then they get to the secret. BBU and its predecessors have gone to great lengths to keep secret the recipe and process for making Thomas's English muffins for over 75 years. Thomas's English muffins are a unique product famous for their distinctive nooks and crannies characteristics. As a result of his employment, Botticella learned trade secrets relating to the production of the Thomas's English muffins, including not only its recipe, but also the equipment necessary for production, necessary moisture level, and the way the product is baked, which all contribute to its distinctive characteristics.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  With the knowledge described in paragraph 13, Botticella could produce an English muffin that might look a bit different, but that would nevertheless possess the distinctive taste, texture, and flavor character that distinguish the Thomas's English muffins, and that have been the foundation of the product's success. End quote. If you're Chris, this is bad.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  Because you have to remember, the judge is coming to this cold.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Louis Del Giudice, partner, Troutman Pepper Locke, muffin trade secret enthusiast.

• 32:29Speaker 06

  He knows nothing about what's going on. He gets a slice of paper that's, you know, this emergency order on top of his desk that says, we need you to act now and we need you to stop somebody from getting a job, right? That's a pretty tall order to ask a judge to do. And the judge looks at it and says, Thomas's English muffins. Oh, the nooks and crannies.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  An immediately recognizable trade secret. Absolutely. You can't let someone take the secret behind the greatest breakfast product of all time. The judge grants Bimbo's wish. Chris can't join Hostess till the case is heard. Meanwhile, Grupo Bimbo has hired a computer forensics expert who starts looking through Chris's laptop.

• 33:08Speaker 06

  Right after he got off the phone with HR, when they said, hey, we heard the announcement from Hostess, all of a sudden, three flash drives ends up getting plugged into the laptop.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  When confronted with this information, Chris told the court he was practicing for his new job. The court is like, are you serious?

• 33:23Speaker 06

  I was practicing for my new job, how to copy stuff onto a flash drive and take it off the flash drive and put it back on the flash. He's got, you know, you figure he's in his late 50s. He's not good with technology. But yeah, so the court found that a little bit unbelievable that he was practicing.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Chris conceded that it was complicated, but there are mitigating factors here. First, the rush of it all and the fact that he'd just met Liz, his lawyer. Then, two, he'd signed a document with Hostess saying that he wouldn't share any confidential Bimbo information. He said he'd stuck around because he wanted to get his year in bonus and finish two projects he was working on, but the court was not convinced.

• 34:03Speaker 06

  There's not a lot of confusion or new law that was made. It's just, everything's really black and white.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  This is the classic version of the case, black and white. Bimbo catches muffin thief, accuses executive of stealing all sorts of trade secrets, except his lawyer Liz says, if you look at those documents, there's no evidence of that. I saw all of that stuff and none of it had anything to do with the products that Bimbo produced. It had nothing to do. With not only English muffins, but also, you know, cupcakes or anything else. Nah, sandwich thins. Yeah, exactly. Liz says, sure. In those documents, there's financial information, cost-saving strategies, et cetera, confidential stuff, but that's in a different category than the ancient muffin trade secret.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  I can actually read it to you, this section. Okay, so documents in Exhibits nine through 25 include Bimbo's cost-reduction strategies, product launch dates, anticipated plant and line closures, labor contract information, production strength and weaknesses of many Bimbo bakeries, and the cost structures for individual products by brand. Right. All of this documentation is highly confidential, even within Bimbo, and would be extremely harmful to Bimbo in the hands of the competitor. You don't think that's sufficient? I agree that it was confidential. It's confidential, but it's not a trade secret. Bimbo leads with the nooks and crannies in the muffins, but in all the fine print of their complaint, nary a nook nor a cranny. And yet Liz thinks that's really what this was all about.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Anytime that any executive leaves a big company and goes to another company, he'll be taking with him the knowledge that he's acquired of how to be a chief executive or a senior executive. You can't say that that's a secret just because he's learned it at one company. I did think that they wanted to maybe make a statement to people at Bimbo who might be thinking of stealing or peddling the English muffin secret, you know, that they were going to pursue them. What anyone on the outside of the case knows is the result. Chris got crushed. If you search this case online, you'll see an example made of it on all sorts of law

• 36:27Speaker 00

  firm websites. You'll find it in an introductory textbook for intellectual property law. But in none of those will you hear whether Bimbo Bakeries was truly able to hold its most legendary secret up under scrutiny. Because the case never went to trial. It was meant to go to trial, but Liz told me there wasn't money for a trial.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  The judge ruled in favor of Bimbo. Hostess told the New York Times, "We have a business to run. We have to move on." Liz appealed the case and lost. The ruling stood.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Now, I'll grant you that Chris was not an ideal defendant, but this case had real consequences for his life.

• 37:10Speaker 06

  After the fact that said, you go anywhere near the baking industry, you have to tell Thomases that you're going to be employed there. And which means Thomases now would have the right to go to court and get some subpoenas and ask questions of the new employer and what is he going to do? Like, what is this poor guy? If you want to take his side of the story, what is this poor guy supposed to do? Does now he have a set of handcuffs on? He has to continue to work and can't go anywhere else? Which is essentially what happened to him. No one's going to touch that guy now with a 10-foot pole.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Bimbo didn't respond to a request for comment by the time we recorded this episode. I tried for months to reach Chris Spodichella. Finally, I found an address and I wrote him a letter. He wrote me an email in which he described traveling to the hearing across the country, even though he lived in California, scrambling to pay for the appeal and going bankrupt. He writes, quote, "You will never understand the impact that this had on my personal and professional life."

• 38:12Speaker 00

  What first grabbed me about this story was the idea that the nooks and crannies of a Thomases English muffin had some supercharged legal power. But by this point, after reporting the story, I realized what this had meant, at least to Chris. And when I talked to Louis and Jeannie about the future of trade secrecy, I saw a world of trade secrets opening up before me, now once futuristic and medieval, where every company had mystical code books full of secret recipes, a nook and cranny for every employee.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Nooks and crannies is a shorthand for trade secret. But the actual trade secret of the nooks and crannies never came before a jury. I had learned that this controversy was, to my mind, unresolved. So we at Revisionist History decided to resolve it.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  We are trying to free the muffin. So we're Okay. We're reverse engineering the muffin recipe. Whoa, I kind of love this. Okay. You can't, don't tell people that. Next week, we attempt to crack the code of the English muffin. My question for you is, is this like you're trying to Like create their exact product. Yeah, can we make this exact English muffin?

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Nattifafri, with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Burden-Lawrence. This episode was edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Jake Flanagan, Jordan Manikin, Greta Cohn, and Sarah Nix. Fact checking on this episode by Kate Furby. Original scoring by Louis Scarra. Mixing and mastering by Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Ben Nattifafri.

• 40:18Speaker 00

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• 40:26Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 41:08Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 41:36Speaker 03

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 41:50Malcolm Gladwell?

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