/ 2 December 2004

It’s all cereal. Seriously.

How’s this for creative thinking? A cafe has opened with pyjama-clad servers pouring cereal day and night, topping it off with everything from fruit to malted milk balls, and serving it in ”bowls” resembling Chinese takeout containers.

It’s all cereal. Seriously.

Cereality Cereal Bar & Cafe, which opened its first sit-down cafe on Wednesday on the University of Pennsylvania campus, is a sugarcoated — and tongue-in-cheek — homage to what your mother always told you was the most important meal of the day. But she probably never dished out bowls of Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch

topped with Pop Rocks.

Behind glass-door kitchen-style cabinets at Cereality are 30 varieties of brand-name cold cereal. Customers order from ”cereologists,” whose most popular mix is two 226,79g scoops with one of 36 toppings, plus regular, flavoured or soy milk for $2,95. Also offered are cereal bars and made-to-order cereal smoothies and yogurt blends.

”This is great because you can try all different kinds and not have to buy the whole box,” said Penn freshman Erica Denhoff (18) as she munched on a healthy concoction of Quaker Oat Squares, Corn Chex and yogurt flax bark with skim milk.

”I’m on the track team. … I eat cereal for breakfast and for a snack if I need energy.”

Co-founders David Roth and Rick Bacher opened the first Cereality, a kiosk in Arizona State University’s student union, last year. Besides the Philadelphia cafe in the middle of Penn’s retail district, the company wants to open more than a dozen

Cerealities next year on campuses, hospital lobbies, airports and office buildings.

”We don’t see this as [solely] a college concept, we see this as being relevant to the 95% of the American public that eats cereal,” Roth said.

In Philadelphia, customers can eat and stretch out on a couch, watch cartoons on a flat-screen TV or check their e-mail via free wi-fi access.

American Dietetic Association spokesperson Gail Frank said cereals can be a good fast food because they’re high in fibre and loaded with vitamins and minerals — as long as customers keep their sweet tooths in check and pick healthier toppings like nuts and fruit. – Sapa-AP