A slim-downed Hostess Brands is the envy of bloated baking rival Entenmann’s.

Twinkie maker Hostess, which was bought out of bankruptcy last year, is a leaner, meaner company after scrapping its labor contracts, shedding 18,000 jobs and selling its snack-cake business to a pair of private-equity firms.

A year later, new owners Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. are preparing to shop the much smaller but profitable bakery outfit for $1.5 billion — more than triple the $410 million they paid for it, sources said.

Hostess’s comeback — albeit bittersweet — has emboldened closest competitor Entenmann’s, which is locked in negotiations with its New York City area union delivery drivers.

The 116-year-old baking outfit owned by Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo is seeking wage cuts from drivers in the Northeast after winning similar concessions from workers in Ohio.

Hostess’s success “may give [Entenmann’s] a little more of an edge in negotiations,” said Arthur Wheaton, a labor professor at Cornell University.

Members of Teamsters Local 802, which represents roughly 300 Entenmann’s drivers in New York and northern New Jersey, are preparing for the worst and have authorized union leaders to call a strike, a source said.

New York-based Entenmann’s is cutting costs as it gets squeezed on price by Hostess, Little Debbie and Tastykake, as well as premium brands.

A sales director at a large Manhattan supermarket chain said he’s cutting back on Entenmann’s pies and other baked goods.

“If a customer is going to spend $7 on an Entenmann’s cake, why not spend an extra $1 or $2 and get a premium cake,” he said, adding that Bimbo pitched him a few months ago on a line of Hostess knockoff products.

“It was almost like, are you for real? I didn’t think it was great,” he said.

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union refused to grant concessions to save Hostess from liquidation two years ago, fearing it would drive down wages and benefits across the industry.

After jettisoning bread and other brands beyond the snack cakes, the new Hostess has fewer than 2,000 workers and has reopened just four of the company’s 13 snack plants. It has outsourced almost all of its deliveries.

As a result, the once-money-losing company is generating around $175 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

While the new Hostess is profitable, it has come at a cost. In the snack-cake business, 2014 market share has fallen from 18 percent before the liquidation to 12.9 percent, according to Euromonitor.

Meanwhile, Hostess has worked to keep union forces at bay. Workers at plants in Indianapolis, Schiller Park, Ill., and Columbus, Ga., voted in recent months to unionize. Hostess responded by shutting down the Illinois plant.

Bimbo earlier this year also closed its landmark Long Island bakery and shifted production to other plants.

Apollo, Hostess and Bimbo declined to comment, while Metropoulos and the Teamsters did not return calls.