FOOD: Breakfast Bestseller

Bacon and eggs, toast, waffles, pancakes have their devotees, but the most popular American breakfast is cold cereal with milk. So, at least, say cereal makers, and they have some figures to back up their claim. From 1967 through 1972, cereal sales hardly grew at all, but since then they have been rising rapidly—by 13% in 1973, 8% in 1974 and nearly 6% last year, to 1.8 billion lbs. In those three years, dollar sales have risen from $1.1 billion to $1.7 billion, and per capita consumption of cereal has expanded almost a third, from about 6 lbs. in 1972 to nearly 8 lbs. in 1975.

The years of the boom have been a period first of roaring inflation, then of deep recession, and those misfortunes seem to have increased the main appeal of breakfast cereals: economy. Says Kellogg’s Corporate Publications Manager Rolfe Jenkins: “People on tight budgets have found cold cereal a good buy.” With reason: the Cereal Institute, Inc., calculates the cost of an average 1-oz. serving of cereal and 4 oz. of milk at just under 110, even after the price rises of recent times. In addition, more and more married women are working outside the home; husbands and children who have to make their own breakfasts are increasingly inclined to reach for a box of cereal. Manufacturers also have made cereals more nutritious, partly in response to testimony by diet experts who in 1970 told a Senate subcommittee that many widely sold cereals had little or no nutritional value. The year before those hearings, only 16% of cold cereals were fortified with vitamins and iron; by 1973,85% were.

Though prosperous, the cereal market remains a turbulent one in which no fewer than 156 brands, produced by about 55 manufacturers, fight for sales. The count changes constantly because cereal makers keep bringing out new brands—usually spending $3 to $5 million on advertising to introduce them —in order to catch the buyer’s attention.

A Lot of Puff? The competition is hottest in presweetened cereals, which captured 31% of sales last year. Falling sugar prices are encouraging manufacturers to step up introductions of new brands: General Mills is bringing out Fruit Brutes, aiming to win kids away from Kellogg’s Fruit Loops, and Ralston Purina is offering Fruity Freakies. Later this year Ralston will introduce Moonstones, a fruit-flavored cereal in crescent, star and sphere shapes, and Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs, which (or so kids will be told) stream from the mouth of a “computer-type monster” named Cecil when his “funny bone” is tickled. New brands of presweetened cereals frequently have a short life: Post’s Pink Panther Flakes, Quaker Oats’ Quake Quangaroos and General Mills’ Baron von Redberry have all been introduced and then dropped in the past four years.

Curiously, cereal makers are rather reticent in talking about their recent sales successes. Reason: a Federal Trade Commission investigation that began in 1972 and is likely to wind up in a few months. The FTC is seeking to determine whether Kellogg’s, General Mills, General Foods (which markets Post cereals) and Quaker Oats have monopolized the market by flooding it with similar brands and advertising them on a scale that smaller competitors cannot match. The FTC, in other words, suspects that the competition is all a lot of puff; to the cereal makers, it seems only too real.