Kellogg History: Founding, Timeline, and Milestones - Zippia (2024)

In 1907 output had reached 2,900 cases a day, with a net profit of about a dollar per case.

In 1911 the advertising budget reached $1 million.

Sales and profits continued to climb, financing several additions to the Battle Creek plant and the addition of a plant in Canada, opened in 1914, as well as an ever-increasing advertising budget.

By 1920, the company produced thirty thousand cases of cereal per day in Battle Creek.

The present name was adopted in 1922 after the company began making cereals other than cornflakes.

Kellogg's began sponsoring radio shows for children and introduced cartoon elves called Snap, Crackle, and Pop to sell Rice Krispies, which hit the market in 1928.

In 1930 Kellogg established the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which has donated large sums of money in support of efforts at social improvement, particularly programs of child welfare.

In 1931, the Kellogg Company announced that most of its factories would shift towards 30-hour work weeks, from the usual 40.

Additional foreign operations were established in Manchester, England, in 1938, followed by plants in South Africa, Mexico, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Switzerland, and Finland.

General Mills had sponsored the first televised sports broadcast in 1938, and through the years its products had been promoted by such television and radio personalities as the Lone Ranger, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle.

After a series of health problems, the younger Kellogg committed suicide in 1938.

In 1941 the company began a $1 million modernization program, updating old steam-generation equipment and adding new bins and processing equipment.

When W.K. died in Battle Creek in 1951, aged ninety-one, Kellogg’s was the world leader in its field.

In 1952 more than 85% of sales came from ten breakfast cereals, although the company also sold a line of dog food, some poultry and animal feeds, and Gold Medal pasta.

Tony the Tiger was introduced in 1953 following a contest to name the spokesperson for the new cereal, Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes of Corn.

Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California.

In 1960 Kellogg earned $21.5 million on sales of $256.2 million and boosted its market share to 40%.

In 1964, Kellogg's introduced a new breakfast product, Pop Tarts.

In 1969 the company began to diversify.

Smith’s Pie Company in 1976; and Pure Packed Foods, makers of nondairy frozen foods, in 1977. It purchased Fearn International, makers of soups, sauces, and other foods, in 1970; Mrs.

Criticism boiled over in 1972 when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Kellogg and its leading rivals General Mills and General Foods of holding a shared monopoly and overcharging consumers more than $1 billion during the previous 15 years.

In 1972, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Kellogg's and its two major competitors, General Mills and General Foods, of keeping smaller companies out of the cereal market and of overcharging customers.

Back in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with Stephen Wozniak, a former high school friend who was working for the Hewlett-Packard Company.

In 1976 he helped launch Apple.

When Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976.

Salem, NH: Ayer, 1976.

In 1978, sales of Kellogg's sugar-coated cereals fell for the first time.

Despite its problems, Kellogg believed the cereal business still represented its best investment opportunity. “When you average 28% return on equity in your own business, it’s pretty hard to find impressive acquisitions,” said Chairman William E. LaMothe, a onetime salesman who became CEO in 1979.

The company spent $50 million to bring three varieties of Nutri-Grain cereal to market in 1982.

In 1983 the company recruited PepsiCo, Inc., president John Sculley to be its chief executive officer (CEO) and, implicitly, Jobs’s mentor in the fine points of running a large corporation.

After underspending its competition in marketing and product development, Kellogg's US market share hit a low 36.7% in 1983.

He would later be renowned for his insistence that the Macintosh be not merely great but “insanely great.” In January 1984 Jobs himself introduced the Macintosh in a brilliantly choreographed demonstration that was the centrepiece of an extraordinary publicity campaign.

And in 1984 Kellogg sparked a fiber fad when it began adding a health message from the National Cancer Institute to its All-Bran cereal.

But Jobs’s apparent failure to correct the problem quickly led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 Sculley convinced Apple’s board of directors to remove the company’s famous cofounder.

But Kellogg did regain much of its lost market share, claiming 40 percent in 1985, and it continued to outperform itself year after year.

Meanwhile, in 1986 Jobs acquired a controlling interest in Pixar, a computer graphics firm that had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company of Hollywood movie director George Lucas.

In 1986 Kellogg posted its 30th consecutive dividend increase, its 35th consecutive earnings increase, and its 42nd consecutive sales increase.

In 1988 the company sold its United States and Canadian tea operations, in a demonstration of Kellogg’s renewed commitment to the cereal market.

The "Gotta Have My Pops" campaign had been developed in 1988 by the Leo Burnett ad agency as a new creative idea to generate interest and excitement for the Corn Pops brand.

Although Kellogg had a commanding position internationally, it faced a new and more formidable international competitor starting in 1989.

By 1991 Kellogg held 50 percent of the non-United States cereal market, and 34 percent of its profits were generated outside the United States.

Under Langbo’s direction, the company underwent a reengineering effort in 1993 that committed the company to concentrate its efforts on its core business of breakfast cereal.

By 1994, CPW was already beginning to eat into Kellogg's market share in various countries.

Over the following decade Jobs built Pixar into a major animation studio that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length feature film to be completely computer-animated, Toy Story, in 1995.

In November 1996 Kellogg Chief Executive Officer Arnold Langbo said that the company would do whatever it took to regain its market share.

In 1996, after suffering a substantial decline in sales and earnings, the company placed emphasis on strengthening and repositioning itself for long-term growth.

The company's position became even stronger with the 1996 addition of the three Lender's plants, plus the purchase of a Kentucky convenience foods plant.

Kellogg's "Gotta Have My Pops" campaign was featured on Sony Corporation of America's "The Station," an interactive, entertainment website (http://www.station.sony.com). Kellogg was one of eight major advertisers that signed on when the network was launched in March 1997.

General Mills, in second place behind Kellogg, had sales of $5.6 billion in 1997.

Officers: Arnold G. Langbo, 60, Chmn. & CEO, 1997 base salary $980,000; Thomas A. Knowlton, Exec.

In 1997, it opened the W. K. Kellogg Institute for Food and Nutrition Research, where food experts tried to create new items.

The new complex was scheduled to open in Summer 1998.

Later in 1999 Kellogg took an even bolder step by positioning its cereal as diet food for the first time.

In the fourth quarter of 2000, Kellogg's operations were restructured into two major divisions--USA and International--to streamline operations and reduce costs.

The United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland remained Kellogg's largest market outside the United States, and experienced a 3 percent increase in cereal sales during 2000.

The acquisition, completed in March 2001, brought to Kellogg not only Keebler's cookie and cracker business, but also their direct store door (DSD) delivery system, which was expected to increase the growth potential of snack foods such as Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bars and Rice Krispies Treats squares.

In 2001, Kellogg's recalled corn dogs sold under its Morningstar Farms brand, after tests showed it contained traces of modified corn not approved for use in foods.

Like Kellogg USA, Kellogg International's focus on "volume to value" in 2001 was applied to sales, marketing, and new-product initiatives.

After a year of significant changes, the company emerged "a stronger organization, (with) a tighter focus and revitalized employees whose determination is greater than ever." The year 2002 indicated progress in the form of sustainable, reliable sales and earnings growth.

In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and the following year he underwent a major reconstructive surgery known as the Whipple operation.

By 2003 retail cereal sales as a whole had increased by 7 percent for Kellogg, contributing to the nearly $9 billion the company ultimately took in that year.

In January 2004 the cable television channel Court TV introduced a new advertising vehicle in the form of short vignettes that were aired between prime-time investigative programs.

In 2004 Leo Burnett USA won a coveted Gold EFFIE (Packaged Food category), an industry award measuring effectiveness in advertising, for the campaign.

The company reported sales nearing $10 billion at the end of 2004.

He eventually sold the studio to the Disney Company in 2006.

Kellogg's also owns the Bear Naked, Natural Touch, Cheez-It, Murray, Austin cookies and crackers, Famous Amos, Gardenburger (acquired 2007), and Plantation brands.

In August 2011 he resigned as CEO of Apple, and two months later, at age 56, he died.

In 2017, Kellogg's acquired Chicago-based food company Rxbar for $654 million.

On April 1, 2019, it was announced that Kellogg's was selling Famous Amos, Murray's, Keebler, Mother's and Little Brownie Bakers (one of the producers of the cookies for the Girl Scouts of the USA) to Ferrero SpA for $1.4 billion.

On July 29, 2019, that sale was completed.

In October 2021, workers at all of Kellogg's cereal-producing plants in the United States went on a strike conducted by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union over disagreements over the terms of a new labor contract.

On December 3, 2021, a tentative deal was struck to end the worker strike, but the union members overwhelmingly rejected the tentative agreement and Kellogg's management announced they would seek to replace all 1,400 striking workers.