This birthplace of Grape-Nuts and one-time home of health nuts is ground zero for snap-crackle-pop culture.
If you grew up watching “Captain Kangaroo,” “Huckleberry Hound,” “The Monkees,” “My Favorite Martian” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” — and that’s just for starters — then you also viewed countless Kellogg’s ads. Chances are you also sent in countless box tops for corn harmonicas and ate bowl after bowl of Corn Flakes and Sugar Corn Pops (back when it was OK to have “sugar” in the name).
“At that time they had a theme song: ‘Shot with sugar through and through’ ” said Butch Greiffendorf, 59, recalling when the cereal bowed a half century ago. The technologies firm manager, a lifelong resident of Grand Junction, Mich., was 8 when he boarded a school bus for the 70-mile trek to tour the Kellogg’s plant.
It was then, and is still, one of the thrills of his life.
“I was one of the first kids to try Sugar Pops,” Greiffendorf said. “And I’ve always been a machinery person, so to have seen that [plant] at an early age — it was a big event.”
If Greiffendorf hoped to take his grandchildren to the factory, he’d have no such luck today. Tours stopped in the mid-’80s — under deliciously mysterious circumstances we’ll explain later — and the historic South Plant closed in 1999 (it was razed soon after). So instead, he settled for Kellogg’s Cereal City USA, a breakfast-themed attraction run by the non-profit Heritage Foundation.
“You can still learn a lot here,” Greiffendorf said, surveying the factory simulations and cartoonish displays. “This is still a very neat place.”
Battle Creek itself could hardly be described so simply. A strange, self-styled medical guru looms large in its past; its future, judging by the vacant storefronts, is uncertain at best.
And the Battle Creek-Kellogg’s relationship turned sour with the South Plant closing, which came as the company struggled financially. A new CEO, Carlos Gutierrez, and the recent acquisition of Keebler Foods Co. — the biggest in Kellogg’s 97-year history — have turned things around.
But while Kellogg’s future looks brighter, sales still lagged behind rival General Mills as of 2002. It’s not even Battle Creek’s biggest employer anymore (at 1,650 workers, it’s third).
That’s led to rumors Tony the Tiger and crew might skip town. Not so, Kellogg’s spokeswoman Christine Ervin said. “We have a large manufacturing plant, a $70 million world headquarters and a $75 million research and development world headquarters that opened here in 1997.”
One thing is for sure: Those once-famous factory tours are things of the past.
For 80 years, Kellogg’s let millions of visitors — many of them school kids on field trips — march through its plant to see cereal being made. The Baby Boom decades brought a post-tour reward: the “Fruit Loop sundae,” an ice cream cone slathered in Fruit Loops.
All was happy in breakfastland until the tours stopped in April 1986 — a move driven, so official word goes, by pressure from federal health inspectors.
But quite a few folks in Battle Creek, including some Cereal City USA docents, tell a different tale. “There was always the threat of lawsuits [from injured visitors],” said Eddie Herman, 19, whose dad works as a legal counsel for Kellogg’s. “And I think there was a group of German tourists who kept coming through over and over and over, and they [Kellogg’s] started to wonder about them.”
Cereal spies?
“When I started working here, that’s what I told people,” said Herman, a sophomore at (where else?) Kellogg Community College.
Ervin refused to give credence to any spy stories. “That’s more folklore than fact,” she said. But she did confide: “It is true that some of the technology in our plant is proprietary. We very rarely allow visitors.”
A domino effect
As a domino effect, Battle Creek gets far fewer tourists. It took a dozen years before a factory tour substitute opened in 1998. And in its initial years, Cereal City USA struggled with poor attendance and five marketing directors in four years.
But visitor numbers are rising. And while it’s no factory, Cereal City isn’t bad; you can get your photo on a Frosted Flakes box or watch old Kellogg’s ads starring Yogi Bear. (Fact: Kellogg’s brass helped concoct Saturday morning cartoons to sell more products.)
Cereal got its start in Battle Creek more than 100 years ago, in the quest for a healthy breakfast food — though you’d never know it diving into a bowl of Chocolate Mud & Bugs.
Our story begins with a Kellogg, and while he’s not the one who won fame and fortune as a cereal magnate, he plays a crucial role nonetheless. Back in the 1890s, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a place where he put his copious (and curious) human health notions to the test.
Kellogg pioneered in areas from radiation therapy to dietary restraint; he encouraged people to stop drinking coffee and smoking. His patients, who included Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, made him a celebrity. But he was also eccentric; he always wore a white suit — to compensate for being short — and made odd health pronouncements. A favorite: “Eat what the monkey eats, simple food and not too much of it.” (The good doctor is portrayed, in highly fictionalized form, by Anthony Hopkins in “The Road to Wellville.”)
Toasties to Grape Nuts
In 1891, one patient at “the San” (as locals called it) was C.W. Post. A Springfield, Ill., native, Post suffered a nervous breakdown and was taken in as a charity case. It’s unclear whether he dined on an early form of granola, but this much is known: An invigorated Post, inspired by the San’s “simple food,” bought a gas stove and a peanut roaster. He then developed two of the first American cereals — Post Toasties and Elijah’s Manna (today called Grape Nuts). He might as well have panned for gold: Soon, Post was rich (he would later own the first automobile in town).
Meanwhile, Will Keith Kellogg — who handled everything at the San from accounting to janitor duties for a measly six bucks a week — was asked by his older brother to improve on the San’s tasteless health bread. He accidentally left boiled wheat paste out overnight, and when he checked on it in the morning, he forced it through rollers — upon which it crumbled into tasty flakes.
It was in 1894, and while Dr. Kellogg envisioned a small enterprise of medical benefit, W.K. smelled heaping helpings of cash.
Over the next few years, W.K. tinkered with the recipe, changing wheat to corn and adding sugar on the sly to bring out the malt flavoring — which caused his brother a fit, since sugar was forbidden at the San.
Still, W.K. continued to insist: It’s the cereal, not the San, stupid. He wrested control of their fledgling company — in part by buying back stock his miserly sibling paid to San workers in lieu of cash — and proceeded to invent modern marketing as we know it. His earliest gimmick: He asked housewives in magazine ads to not buy Corn Flakes because there weren’t enough boxes to meet demand. (That was only half true; there weren’t many boxes, but not much demand prior to the hysteria-inducing ad, either.) By 1914, he was spending $1 million on advertising; when the Depression hit, Kellogg’s doubled its ad budget, and came out with a profit.
And as W.K. Kellogg made his mint, he also gave quite a bit away before dying in 1951 at age 91. As a result, there’s also quite a bit here named after him, including the local junior high, high school, college and a charitable foundation. But recent years have brought tough times for Kellogg’s and the other Battle Creek cereal makers (Post still operates its flagship plant here). The ’70s saw a sweetened cereals backlash; in the ’90s, convenience foods such as snack bars took a bite out of the cereal market.
Today one gets the sense, driving around Battle Creek, that this town of 55,000 is hanging on, trying to come back. On this road trip weekend, garage sale signs abound — and the pickings at home after home are slim.
Smell of optimism
Still, optimism permeates the air like the smell of toasted corn flakes. “It hurt a lot of people when Kellogg’s [jobs] went south” to Omaha, said Precious Holder, who runs a local talent agency. “But a lot of companies came in. Target brought in a distribution center with 1,500 jobs, between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo. If a person wants to work, there’s work.”
There is also a strong sense of gratitude — as in the advertising slogan “K-E-double L-O-double good” gratitude.
“Kellogg’s has done a lot for Battle Creek,” said Lorel Buschke, 72, a Cereal City docent who has lived in town more than 30 years. “I always ask people: `When you come into Battle Creek, what do you think of?’ Kellogg’s is Battle Creek and Battle Creek is Kellogg’s.”
Trivia that snaps and pops
– The basso profundo behind Tony the Tiger is none other than Thurl Ravenscroft, now 89. His other claim to pop culture fame? He sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” in Dr. Seuss’ 1966 TV special “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”
– Snap! Crackle! and Pop! starred in the first animated cereal ad, a short called “Breakfast Pals” (1937). Lost to history (and assumedly vanquished by the elfin Rice Krispies triumvirate) were their ogre enemies: Tuffy, Soggy and Mushy.
– In 1911 — the height of the cereal boom — 106 corn flake brands came out of Battle Creek. Today, three major cereal makers have plants there: Kellogg’s, Post and Ralston Foods.
– While many speculate what made the Beatles rock stars, little attention has been paid to their diet. In the years just before Beatlemania, John, Paul, George and Ringo consumed massive quantities of corn flakes (an ad for the Kellogg’s cereal inspired John to write “Good Morning, Good Morning” for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”).
— Lou Carlozo
