There’s good news for General Mills and company despite cereal’s decline in popularity. The problem is not, actually, the cereal. So Big Cereal, as we’ll call it for fun, just needs to solve the convenience factor. Do that and they win their customers back. Cereal’s popularity has been on the wane for two decades, a period that roughly coincides with the Internet’s prominence. Digital natives — endlessly busy — just aren’t going bowl-and-spoon in the morning, even with options like soy milk and almond milk bringing ever greater variety to a multitude of cereal choices. Recent research reveals it’s not just McDonald’s and smoothies that have knocked cereal down a peg.
The New York Times reports that millennials don’t like cereal because of the time it takes to clean the bowl: “40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.” That’s good news for the cereal industry, which needs a new conveyance package, not a new product. Better individual disposable packs might be an answer. Finding a new delivery method for an old product is critical in an evolving world. The Kindle
