﻿“Kellogg's” is a name that is linked with breakfast cereals all over the world.
The Kellogg Company was the pioneer of the famous and widely loved Corn Flakes. Even
though there are now several different brands producing this breakfast cereal, the original
corn flakes cereal was the invention of two brothers: William Keith and John Harvey Kellogg.
It all started with a surprising motivation and an accident,
but against the odds, the cereal has survived and thrived for over a century now...
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John Harvey Kellogg was born on February 26, 1852. He was a medical doctor with a degree
from New York University Medical College. For 67 years, John worked as the director of Battle Creek
Sanitarium, a health resort located in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. Battle Creek
Sanitarium was, at the time, a world-renowned health establishment which was founded by members
of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and as such, was run on principles advocated by the Seventh-Day
Adventists. From 1876 till the time of his death in 1943, John Harvey Kellogg, who himself was a
conservative Seventh-Day Adventist, helped the sanitarium to flourish and become a preferred
healthcare destination for the rich and famous. Born on April 7, 1860, William Keith Kellogg,
more commonly referred to as W.K. Kellogg, was the younger brother of John Harvey.
He dropped out of school in the sixth grade at the age of 13 and has even been called stupid by
his teacher. When he was 14 years old, he ventured into selling brooms as a salesman for his father’s
broom business. Unfortunately, he failed at that too, making matters worse for him.
Eventually, his brother assisted him by giving him an unofficial job at the sanitarium.
Will’s job at the sanitarium may have been referred to by several titles.
Sometimes, he was called the business manager. However,
for almost three decades that he worked at the sanitarium, Will was hardly anything more than
an errand boy on a salary. He worked under, and was mostly overshadowed by his world-renowned,
learned brother who ran the sanitarium in a manner comparable to modern establishments today,
making it one of the most attractive healthcare locations of its day. Will did everything from
arranging funerals, to bookkeeping, to fixing things around the sanitarium for around $25
a week. His most exciting tasks included chasing down the insane when they escaped.
The two brothers practiced the beliefs of their church such as vegetarianism. John
especially had strict values that he derived from the ideology of the Seventh-Day Adventist church.
For instance, apart from not eating meat, John also didn’t take alcohol or caffeine.
John was an advocate of a health movement that he called “biological living.”
This involved exercising and bathing more, and eating less meat and more whole grains.
Sometimes, Will assisted in food preparation. He helped develop a moist and tasty breakfast treat
made from wheat dough pressed into large sheets and cut into square servings for the patients.
One fateful night, Will accidentally left the dough sit uncovered and found that by morning,
it had dried out. When he ran a rolling pin over it, it “flaked up.”
Instead of throwing the flakes away, he decided to put them in bowls and serve them.
The patients loved the crunchy stuff and demanded more.
After this, the brothers experimented with other different types of grains including corn.
In 1896, a patent for flaked cereals and the production process
was issued to the Kellogg brothers. Suddenly, a light went on in Will’s head.
He started a mail order business to supply patients with cereal after they went home.
In the first full year of sales outside the sanitarium, he sold 113 000 pounds.
The pair started a company known as the Sanitas Food Company in 1897. The company produced
the corn flakes for sale. At that time, breakfast could be anything. For the rich,
breakfast could be steaks, eggs, chicken, cold cuts, etc. The poorer class often ate porridge,
farina, and other boiled grains. Anything that could be eaten for lunch or dinner could also be
eaten for breakfast. This eating habit was cited as a leading cause of the cases of indigestion
that was widespread among Americans. So, with the help of John Harvey Kellogg’s popularity,
the brothers promoted cereal as a healthy food that could serve as a breakfast substitute.
The original cornflakes recipe may not have been so popular among people today. It had no sugar or
added flavors. True to its purpose, the breakfast cereal was very bland. To solve this problem,
William had the idea of adding sugar to the recipe. John thought that this was a terrible
idea. While William was more concerned about the popularity of the cereal and making more sales,
his elder brother John didn’t care about sales. In fact, he would give out the recipe for free and
allow people at the sanitarium to observe the entire process.
John would tell people that his main concern was not the money. In his words, “I am not
after the business. I am after the reform.” John didn’t take it well that William had plans
to add sugar to the cereal, just as William wasn’t happy about John giving out the corn
flakes recipe for free. This caused a rift between the two brothers. In 1906,
William decided to create his own company to mass produce the breakfast cereal.
William Keith Kellogg took a bold step and opened up his own company in 1906. That William was able
to muster up the resolve and courage to get out from underneath the shadow of his brother
and go out on his own, despite his brother’s objections is a noteworthy achievement on its own.
It had a lot of accompanying risks of failure, but he decided to do it anyway. William named his
company Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Because many people had expressed their interest
in the cereal and it was already patented, it’s easy to believe that the business would be a
sure thing for William. Unfortunately, that was far from the case. Despite the patent,
several businessmen found a way to produce the cereal without infringing on the patent.
His brother giving out the recipe for free didn’t help matters. By 1912, over a hundred
corn flakes brands had entered into the market. One of the competitors was a former patient at the
sanitarium named C.W. Post (Charles William). Post was one of those who had observed the
process of making corn flakes while he was at the sanitarium. He then went on to mimic this process
and became the creator and seller of Grape Nuts. Post was just one of many competitors.
Will had to find a way to stand out from other brands in the saturated market.
One way he managed to stand out was by adding sugar and flavors like malt and salt to the
cereal. Even though the cereal experienced its initial success as a health food,
Will had an instinct that it would do better as a breakfast food if it was sweeter and more
flavorful. But he needed to do more because most of his competitors were doing the same thing.
Will followed his idea up with several advertisement campaigns and continuous
improvement on the recipe. Just about a year into business,
tragedy struck Will’s company. The factory was destroyed in a fire,
so he had to take out loans from banks to rebuild his factory.
William Keith Kellogg was an advertising pioneer. The amount of money Will spent
on advertising was unheard of. Other companies may have considered him crazy.
One of the company’s incredibly successful ad campaigns began in 1907
and was known as Wink Day. Wink day was Wednesdays and women were encouraged to “wink
at your grocer and see what you get.” This act was quite risqué in its day and every Wednesday,
the company offered a free box of cereal to ladies who did it.
The daring nature of this campaign appealed to customers and sales shot through the roof.
In addition to the various advertising efforts, Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company was the
pioneer of cereal offers. For years, they gave out the Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Booklet
to anyone who bought two packets of cornflakes. Will’s determination and commitment to advertising
was revolutionary. As Will once said: “The fire is of no consequence.
You can't burn down what we have registered in the mind of the American woman.”
This makes it easy to understand Will’s motivation to advertise remained strong
even in the face of a fire. He knew exactly what the driving force of his business was.
Apart from advertising, Will was also a pioneer of other business methods that are
conventional today. For instance, the company was one of the first brands to use a mascot.
The original corn flakes mascot, which is still in use today
as a symbol for the start of the day, was Cornelius the rooster.
Eventually, Will changed the company’s name to Kellogg’s when they started producing more
products other than just corn flakes. Kellogg’s was also one of the first food
producers to put the nutritional values of their foods on the food packages.
By 1917, the company was producing nine million boxes of cereal per day.
At its 75th anniversary in 1981, Kellogg’s had 47 plants in 21 countries.
Before he died, William Keith had become one of the wealthiest men in America,
within just two decades of founding his company. Today, Kellogg’s corn flakes are one of the most
popular breakfast cereals all over the world. For more inspiring business stories don’t forget
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