Bowl by bowl, traditional ready-to-eat cereal is getting more nutritious and edging its way back into the healthful perimeter that more Americans are putting around their diets. Kellogg and General Mills, the industry giants, are making that a priority for their brands.

Kellogg, for example, plans to introduce new products infused with more nutrients to help bring back better-educated, higher-income adults to the traditional breakfast that so many of them enjoyed as kids. The new offerings include Raisin Bran with omega-3s and a multigrain version of Special K that will debut later this month in North America. Lately, Kellogg also has been promoting the simple goodness of some of its classic cereals because of their grain content.

CEO John Bryant told analysts that kids and lower-income adults are still spooning up plenty of cereal, according to the Associated Press, but higher-income adults have been cutting back. "I don't think they're really that price-sensitive," he said. "The real issue there is innovation."Continue reading...

If new products are the lifeblood of a mature business, then hearts at Kellogg's are pumping a mile a minute these days. The venerable cereal maker continues to tap into its innovative side with a bevy of new products on their way to grocery stores.

The new offerings build on the company's recent Krave chocolate cereal launch — its most successful in two decades. Kellogg struck gold beginning several years back by leveraging its Special K breakfast cereal into a weight-loss brand and adding a variety of new products under that brand, including nutrition bars, resulting in a hugely successful extension and rejuvenation of an old franchise.

Since then, Kellogg has continued to go back to the new-product well, especially combining its trusted and high-performing lineup of traditional brands with new approaches.

For example, one of the new versions of breakfast favorites, Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights, tries to take advantage of the steadily increasing appeal of oats as a better-for-you ingredient. Pop-Tarts Oatmeal Delights are sprinkled with toasted cinnamon-oats crumbles on a baked oat-flour crust, debuting in two flavors.

Another fave getting an update? Why, Scooby Doo, of course!Continue reading...

While it may not rule the morning everywhere, the once family-owned Weetabix cereal brand has been ruling British breakfast tables since the 1930s and now it's turning its powers onto another region of the world: Asia. Earlier this year, China’s Food Group Co Ltd agreed to shell out $1.12 billion to secure a 60 percent stake in the company and distribute the cereal all around the region. Marketwatch hears that the company “is considering listing Weetabix … on the Hong Kong stock exchange.”

"The Weetabix brand will have access to all of Bright Food's distribution channels, including our more than 100,000 retail outlets, which will allow it to be brought to Chinese households more quickly," said Wang Zongnan, chairman of Bright Food, according to China Daily.

“Bright clearly has a distribution capability in China that is very robust and much more than Weetabix could organically hope for,” said Clive Black, director and head of research at Shore Capital, according to Bakery and Snacks. “Therefore, assuming that the Chinese pallet for cereal-based breakfasts exists and grows, then this could be, should be, a material source of long-term growth for Weetabix.”

Still, it won’t be the same old Weetabix hitting breakfast tables in China.Continue reading...

General Mills and Kellogg have been ruling the cold-cereal market for an eternity. Those two behemoths now own about 60 percent of a $9 billion U.S. market, but that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t finding some success cutting into their market. 

One in particular, the 93-year-old MOM Brands Co., which was recently renamed from Malt-O-Meal, is producing such cereals as Tootie Fruities and Honey Nut Scooters, which bear more than a passing resemblance to Froot Loops and Honey Nut Cheerios.Continue reading...

Remember the old aphorism about eating oatmeal because it "sticks to your ribs?" Quaker Oats now plans to find out whether that is at least metaphorically true — and, if so, whether there might be a new "satiety" benefit to eating its oatmeal products that could help promote the brand.

That's just one of the objectives of the new Quaker Oats Center of Excellence, a research nexus announced this week by the PepsiCo brand. The company is streamlining and accelerating research around other potential health and nutrition benefits of oats besides it well-documented, government-approved claim to help lower cholesterol levels and thus mitigate heart disease.

Also, Nestle announced that it has centralized its clinical-research efforts at a new unit in its headquarters city of Lausanne, Switzerland, with the aim of rationalizing the planning and management of clinical trials and fundamental research projects so that it's better positioned to gain health claims by the European Food Safety Authority. The new Nestle unit also is expected to help it expand its global reach and better adapt products to gloabl needs, a Nestle executive told NutraIngredients.com.

Both efforts are significant as mainstream CPG giants seek much bigger gains in the world of better-for-you products, just as they for so long have dominated markets for mainstream foods and beverages.Continue reading...

An enjoyable breakfast means the world to Kellogg’s. And life hasn’t been easy for name-brand cereal makers in general in recent years, as time-pressed consumers skip breakfast while others are on the watch-out for GMO ingredients.

Now Kellogg’s is serving up something fresh to remind everyone about the importance of a great breakfast to get the day going: a major brand overhaul, as Forbes noted on Friday and the Kellogg company outlined in a press release this morning.

The scope of the visual and verbal identity refresh includes “an updated logo, identifying the Kellogg’s brand’s core purpose, incorporating the ‘masterbrand’ into all Kellogg’s marketing campaigns, consolidating 42 company websites around the world to one, and the new tagline, 'Let’s Make Today Great.'"

The move, Forbes notes, puts digital and social media "at the core of its engagement efforts." To that end, Kellogg's US joined Twitter last week to further engage fans and to help promote its London 2012 Olympics sponsorship of eight Team USA athletes, as it's also talking up on its Facebook page.Continue reading...

Like Marmite, toast and tea, Weetabix long has been favored by British consumers as a breakfast staple. But now a major Chinese food conglomerate believes that Chinese consumers, who traditionally prefer congee porridge to start their day, will gobble up the iconic cereal as well.

China's state-owned Bright Food has bought a 60-percent stake in the 80-year-old brand, which accounts for about 7 percent of U.K. sales. Western eating habits are slowly catching on in China and across Asia as wealthier citizens seek to diversify from traditional staples such as rice and steamed bread.

"We are excited by the many growth opportunities for the business, especially in international markets, and Asia in particular," said Zongnan Wang, chairman of Bright Food, according to the U.K.'s Guardian. "With Bright Food's strong resources and our expertise in both the Chinese and broader international markets, we are excellently placed to develop the Weetabix business."Continue reading...

There was a time, not so long ago, that every athlete in the land dreamed of seeing his or her face on a box of Wheaties, "the Breakfast of Champions." Wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin has been there. Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench has been there. Soccer legend Mia Hamm has been there.

Probably the most famous Wheaties box, though, was the one featuring Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner, who won gold in Montreal in 1976 and of course went on to be the step-patriarch of the Kardashian family. In all, hundreds of athletes have been on a Wheaties box since the practice began in 1934. It’s not looking good for the athletes of tomorrow to get the same pleasure. In fact, most athletes of tomorrow aren’t likely eating Wheaties for breakfast.

General Mills, the maker of Wheaties and a slew of other cereals, may be responsible to 32% of the cereal market domestically, but Wheaties is only bringing in 0.5% of the market these days, according to CNBC’s Darren Rovell. Back in the ’60s, Wheaties was powerhouse as it took care of 6.5% of all cereals, he notes.

"Wheaties had a clear brand identity," stated Lloyd Moritz, the editor of cereal blog The Breakfast Bowl, on CNBC. "The problem was they rested on their laurels."

Rovell points out that Wheaties has made efforts to expand with Honey Frosted Wheaties in the mid-90's, Wheaties Energy Crunch in 2001, and the two-year-old Wheaties Fuel — but none of them caught on.Continue reading...