Think back to your childhood Saturday morning routine. If you grew up in the latter part of the 20th century, odds are it included cartoons on the television, character-laden pajama pants, and a bowl of cereal. Sound familiar?
It doesn’t to the kids of today. Cereal sales are on a steady decline, partly because of millennials’ reasoning that the breakfast food is simply “too much work”. The staple of our childhood mornings is being faced with an existential crisis we couldn’t have foreseen.
The exit of our favorite breakfast food won’t happen, though, if Kellogg’s has anything to do with it. The cereal giant is the next to put a stake in the Experience Economy, a growing trend that is infiltrating industries of all kinds. Kellogg’s venture is a simple, sleek outlet in New York’s Times Square, designed to “challenge eaters’ conceptions, with delicious results.”
This entails a mirage of out-of-the-box recipes, an innovative kitchen cabinet delivery service, and a variety of prizes included in each order (which may or may not include tickets to “Hamilton” at some point).
Kellogg’s is among a growing list of vendors that realizes we are now in the Experience Economy, where products are not enough.The business approach is a simple yet genius idea: people want to experience what they’re interacting with first-hand, like Magnum’s pop-up ice cream shop in SoHo or Pepsi’s upcoming kola nut cocktail venture, so the companies bring their product directly to the consumer in a fun and immersive environment.
Businesses that have embraced the Experience Economy are trying to change the way the public views their product. As the developer of Kellogg’s new recipes, Christina Tosi, put it: “I’ve been a cereal lover since I was a kid. I believe in the excitement a bowl of cereal can bring any time of the day and I’m so excited to bring back a household staple in a fun, creative way!”
Now the only question is, will Kellogg’s have the “snap, crackle and pop” to compete with other Times Square attractions like the M&M Store? Or will the visitors think more along the lines of “It’s Grrrreat”?
