The Backstory: Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and a Billion Dollar Feud

Breakfast pre-1900 usually involved fried meats, eggs, biscuits, and potatoes. Then a kitchen fail at a health sanitarium led to a whole new way to eat your morning meal. After that, a vicious disagreement between the Kellogg brothers allowed one to build a multi billion dollar company with Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and other cereal recipes he'd stolen from his brother.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, So you think about breakfast and what's the
first thing that pops into your mind. Well, for a
lot of folks, it's cereal, a quick bowl of sweet,
crunchy goodness before racing out the door. But where did
that come from? I'm Patty Steele. An industrial kitchen accident
and a family feud. It's a nasty breakfast battle. Next

(00:21):
on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. In the
late eighteen hundreds, if you walked into the quiet, very
austere Battle Creek Sanitarium, a health resort in Battle Creek, Michigan,
breakfast didn't look anything like it looks today. No sugary
cereals like crosted flakes or fruit loops, no colorful boxes,

(00:45):
no cute little cartoon mascots. Instead, guests at the sanitarium
were served odd and tasteless health foods designed to cure
the ailments that modern life had inflicted on folks. And
one of those foods was born completely by accident and
also led to a bitter family feud. The guy running

(01:05):
the sanitarium was John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor with some
extremely unusual ideas. There were rumors he'd never consummated his
marriage with his wife, but he and Ella had forty
two adopted children. Yes, I said forty two. Imagine making
breakfast for them. In the nineteenth century, most Americans ate

(01:26):
heavy breakfasts. They started their day with a plateful of meat,
fried potatoes, biscuits, and gravy if they could afford all that.
John Kellogg was convinced that all that rich food was
destroying people's health and, in his mind, even their morality.
He believed that a really bland diet of grains and
vegetables could purify the body in the mind because the

(01:49):
more exciting foods were well too exciting. He wanted everybody
to just calm down. His sanitarium was based on lifestyle
recommendations from the Seventh Day Advance his church, but it
attracted wealthy clientele from across the country. Some came for
medical treatment, others came for what we now call a
wellness retreat. They did hydrotherapy, electro therapy, cold air cure,

(02:14):
and physical therapy involving some exercise and calm, quiet relaxation,
all with a little weight loss thrown in. But Kellogg
had one problem. Healthy food in the eighteen nineties was
super boring, so to keep his guests happy but still
healthy and not too excited. He wanted to jazz it

(02:35):
up just to touch. He experimented constantly in the kitchen,
trying to create new grain based foods that were both
nutritious and easy to digest and at least pleasant to eat,
if not exciting. Helping him run the place and the
kitchen was his younger brother, will Keith Kellogg. Together they
stumbled onto a recipe fail that would change breakfast forever.

(02:58):
It's eighteen ninety four and one evening. The brothers are
in the test kitchen experimenting with boiled wheat. The idea
was to cook the grain, press it into sheets, bake it,
and create a new digestible food for patients. But something
went wrong. They left a batch of cooked wheat sitting
out over night, which would normally have ruined it, but

(03:21):
instead of throwing it away, they decided to run it
through the rollers anyway, pressing it flat, and then something
unexpected happened. Instead of forming a sheet of dough like
it did in other experiments, the dried wheat broke into
thin flakes. When they toasted the flakes in the oven,
they became crispy, light and surprisingly good voila sort of

(03:45):
early wheaties. The guests at the sanitarium loved it. The
accidental invention had a name, flaked Cereal. Pretty soon, the
guys began experimenting with different grains. One variation that worked
really well corn. The flakes were lighter, crispier, and easy
to mass produce, and before long, patients at the sanitarium

(04:07):
were eating the first version of what would become corn flakes.
But a lot of times, success breeds problems. The brothers
ran into two conflicts that ruined their relationship forever. First
of all, they had totally different visions for what should
happen next, and that's where the real story begins. Doctor
John Kellogg thought the cereal should remain a health food

(04:29):
served only at the sanitarium. He wanted it plain, unsweetened,
and medicinal. But his brother Will saw much bigger opportunity.
He believed the flakes could become a mass market product,
a simple breakfast food sold to families across America. The problem.
Will thought sugar was exactly what they needed to make

(04:49):
it sell. As for John, he hated the idea of
adding sugar even worse, Doctor John decided to invite a
guy named C. W. Post into the test kitchen. Post
was a patient at the sanitarium and couldn't pay his bill,
so John invited him to work in the kitchen, where he,
of course saw how the flakes were made. Will was furious.

(05:11):
He wanted it to be a company secret, and Will
was right. CW. Post secretly copied the process, which had
no patent, and started his own cereal company, Post Cereals,
which later became General Foods. The brother's arguments exploded into
a bitter feud, so in nineteen oh six, Will made

(05:31):
a huge move. He left his brother's company and founded
his own, the Battle Creek Toasted corn Flake Company. He
stole the recipe from John, but he then sweetened the
cereal just a bit, packaged it in boxes, and marked
it across the nation. His gamble paid off. Within a
few years, cornflakes were flying off grocery store shelves. Mothers

(05:54):
used to frying up meat, eggs, and potatoes. Raved about
pouring breakfast out of a box, Will even came up
with the idea of putting a toy in the cereal box,
adding a coloring book to the package. In nineteen oh nine,
for him. It was all about business. Kids loved it,
moms were good with it, and they could put fewer
cornflakes in the box because of the room the coloring

(06:16):
book took up. He was the ultimate capitalist. Eventually, his
company would be renamed the Kellogg Company, becoming one of
the largest food brands in the world, but the brother's
relationship never recovered. They spent years fighting in court. The
lawsuits hinged on use of the family name, as well
as who had the right to manufacture toasted cereal. Later on,

(06:40):
Will even stole the recipe for shredded wheat from his
brother and created Kellogg's Shredded Wheat. That led to another
court battle. It was easy to steal a recipe in
those days, as long as you changed one little ingredient.
For Will. That magic ingredient was sugar. He eventually won
full rights from his older brother with the or It's even,

(07:00):
allowing him to collect profits John had made from his
own cereals. The brothers never spoke again, and when Will died,
he left a massive fortune. Some call him the Bill
Gates of his day, not only because of what he created,
but also because he gave a fortune to charity. Problem
is he was really an unlikable guy. In fact, one

(07:22):
of his grandsons said nobody, but nobody shed a tear
at his funeral. Two brothers, one kitchen fail, a lifetime feud.
These days, millions of people start off their mornings with cereal.
But it all goes back to a little kitchen experiment
in Battle Creek when two brothers forgot about a pot

(07:42):
of wheat overnight. From that mistake came an entirely new industry,
a reminder never to give up that sometimes the most
ordinary accidents create the most extraordinary outcomes. Just make sure
you and your partner are on the same page. Hope
you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a

(08:04):
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you have a story you'd like me to cover and
take a deep dive into. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele
and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The
Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group,

(08:28):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
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Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't

(08:50):
know you needed to know.