The T-shirt says it all: ”9% of Americans like cereal; 57% like sex.”
A new restaurant chain is poised to capitalise on the most important meal of the day by offering consumers tantalising combinations of their favorite cereals in trendy shops that scream fun.
Bright colours and pyjama-clad servers greet customers who are offered their choice of name-brand hot and cold cereals and toppings that range from bananas and molasses to mini marshmallows and malted milk balls.
Tucked into kitschy cardboard boxes and coupled with an optional ”sloop” spoon that acts as a straw, Cereality is also a chance to indulge the inner child on the go.
The aim is to create a ”metabrand” that draws on the existing consumer loyalty to breakfast cereals and creates a unique experience, said co-founder David Roth over breakfast on Monday at the flagship store in the heart of Chicago’s business district.
”The goal is to be ubiquitous in the culture where we’re showing up in all the places where people want cereal and being another option for people when they want to snack,” Roth said.
Cereality has recently partnered with Dodge to create roving vans — modelled on the ice cream-truck — which sell cereal, drinks and snacks at suburban soccer games, zoos, shopping centres and even nightclubs.
It has also started a catering operation serving everything from office meetings, to wedding rehearsals to the after-party for the Broadway premier of Harry Connick Jr in The Pyjama Game.
Quick-serve restaurants are planned for hotels, airports, college campuses and storefronts across the United States as the company prepares to launch franchise operations after having generated two years of media buzz through three prototype locations and a savvy marketing campaign.
”We’re looking at 30 development deals with multiple units of 10 to 20 stores by the end of 2007,” Roth said, adding that Cereality expects to expand to Canada and the United Kingdom before considering other markets in Europe and Asia.
Roth, who spent years working as a brand development consultant, came up with the idea for Cereality during a meeting with a client in New York.
”He’s in a Brooks Brothers suit and snacking on Coco Puffs,” Roth said. ”And he said look around, everyone’s doing it.”
Roth did some research and approached Rick Bacher (38) an art director and designer who had done extensive work on branding.
Instead of trying to simply make cereal more portable, or to try to come up with their own cereal, Roth and Bacher decided to exploit the familiarity of existing brands in a new environment.
”People have very strong emotional connection to their cereal,” Roth said.
”People will come in here and have their Lucky Charms even though it’s not what’s best for them — it says something about you what cereal you eat.”
While Roth focused on drawing in partners like oatmeal giant Quaker Foods and customers like Old Navy — which offered a million free breakfast bars to customers who showed up early for the biggest shopping day of the year — Bacher created the look that makes Cereality both hip and homey.
Comfy sofas, bar stools and farmhouse tables are used to create seating areas that look like living rooms, dining rooms and home-style kitchens. A sense of fun was created with snappy (and trademarked) slogans like Always Saturday Morning and the Moo Machine milk bar.
”The moos get fatter as you move from skim to whole” milk, Bacher explained as he pointed to the logos.
The T-shirts — or Cereali-Tees — worn by servers are also for sale with slogans like ”United Flakes of America,” ”Captain of Crunch” and ”Go Ahead. Flake out.”
Early reviews have been good.
”I love cereal and I like to mix it up,” said Randy Alaniz (28) a hog and cattle futures trader who regularly takes breaks from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to indulge in a four dollar carton of Captain Crunch and Reese’s Pieces. – AFP