Did you have breakfast today? It’s one thing when you are enjoying your summer holidays, when you can have delayed breakfasts, but it is quite another for most school goers on working days. The start time of the school and the hurried nature in which you get ready and get started means that breakfasts could often be a blur.
One breakfast item that eases the burden on those managing the kitchen and is eaten by people around the world is the classic cold cereal. There might have been cereals before them, but it was courtesy of two brothers that they enjoy the kind of fame they do now. You would have heard of the brand that came to be because of them, surely. It is Kellogg’s.
Two brothers
Born on February 26, 1852, John Harvey Kellogg was the elder of the two brothers. He made up for his irregular schooling by being an avid reader. While he first attended school full time only at the age of 12, he grew up to receive an M.D. from Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York City, in 1875. By this time, his faith dictated many of his principles, especially those surrounding health and diet.
Will Keith Kellogg, the younger of the two brothers involved in the creation of the cereal flakes industry, was born April 7, 1860 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Even though he was educated only up till the sixth grade, he made up for it with his hard work. As a youngster, Will not only held a job as a stockboy, but also worked as a travelling salesman for household brooms as his father was involved in the business. These experiences shaped the way he led his business in the future.
By 1876, John became the superintendent of a health reform institute in Battle Creek. In order to vary the diet of the patients in the sanatorium, he started experimenting with many nut and vegetable products. Will found his way to the sanatorium himself, starting off as a clerk before rising to the level of a bookkeeper and file manager.
When they worked together
It was here that John and Will started working together on the same problems — to handle the production of foods for sanatorium patients. Their research and development focussed on healthy diet for patients, one that revolved around wholegrain foods and good nutrition.
Like many other inventions and discoveries, the brothers stumbled upon their find by an accident. One particular night in 1894, they boiled wheat with the idea of making dough. They accidentally let it be this way for many hours, forcing the wheat to be softened and tempered.
Instead of discarding the result of their mistake, they decided to put it through the roller process that they did regularly for baking anyway. To their surprise, the individual wheat berries in the mash rolled out into flat, wide flakes.
When they went on to bake them, the result was a crispy cereal product that was not only easy to eat, but also much tastier than the alternatives they had been providing their patients thus far. When the patients got to taste it, most of them took a liking to it immediately. In fact, some of them went so far as to have the flakes shipped over to their homes even after they left the sanatorium facility.
Don’t worry. If you like it with milk, we’ve got one picture to show that too!
| Photo Credit:
peakpx
Going their own ways
On May 31, 1895, John applied for a patent for “Flaked cereals and process of preparing same” and obtained it on April 14 the following year. In his patent, he clearly lays out four steps — soak, cook, roll, bake — and says that the “finished product thus consists of extremely thin flakes”.
By 1898, the brothers started off small, setting up a company to deliver a mail-order operation. The younger of the two continued to experiment, using the same technique with corn and coming up with a product that he believed was even better than what they had set out with.
On one side was John, focussed on pioneering healthy food and its distribution. On the other side was Will, dreaming of turning his business into a packaged food enterprise whose large scale would cover the whole globe. Given the polar opposite nature of their attitude towards their business, it was evident that a rift would ensue.
The fall out between the two brothers eventually did happen in 1906 over the distribution of their cornflake cereal. Will went on to form his own company, which was later renamed as The Kellogg Company (doing business as Kellogg’s).
By this time, there were plenty of players in the industry, including competitors who were once patients at the sanatorium and had had the cereal flakes themselves. Will, however, had the will to persevere and also had the necessary skills to promote and market his goods.
Within the first year of establishing his company, Will was able to sell 1,75,000 cases of his corn flakes. In the years that followed, Kellogg’s became a household name and it remains the case even today.
Will served as the company’s president until 1929 and stayed on as a chairman of the board until 1946. In addition to expanding the product line, Kellogg’s has grown as a company, taking the cereal flakes and other food items that it produces to nearly every nook and corner of the world — just as Will had once dreamt.
Brand identity
Have you ever had anything from Kellogg’s? In case you have, or even if you haven’t, chances are that you know their logo.
If you’ve read the article, you would know that there were several competitors for Will when he set out with his business. In order to stand apart and differentiate his cereal flakes from those of others, he personally started adding his own signature to every box! This was not only a way of differentiating, but also a means of guaranteeing authenticity.
With the passage of time, Will’s handwritten signature has evolved into the famous logo that we see in every box from the company even today. The original script has largely remained intact over the past century or so, with minimal stylistic changes to go with the times.
Published – May 31, 2026 06:54 am IST
