Dave Ross tries to understand what makes this cereal upscale

Today in New York City, Kellogg’s is opening a cereal boutique in Times Square, called KELLOGG’s NYC where they’ll charge $7.50 for a bowl of upscale cereal.

I know! $7.50 for a bowl of cereal is absurd, but I notice people are willing to pay upscale prices for simple food if it has a romantic story behind it. That’s the whole “farm to table” movement. You want to know the heartwarming story about how your expensive food was made.

But it’s tough with breakfast cereal because there’s just nothing heartwarming about it. For example, I looked up how corn flakes are made.

“The corn kernels are crushed in the flake roller … two rollers turn opposite of each other.”

You just can’t hug that.

The company has tried humanizing its flakes. But for the new Kellogg’s cafe in NYC the approach is completely different.   The company has hired celebrity chef Christina Tosi, the founder of the Momofuku Milk Bar in New York’s East Village famous for her soft serve Cereal Milk ice cream, which is made from milk in which corn flakes have been soaking for an hour.

She came up with gourmet cereal dishes like Corn Pops with lemon blueberry jam and Fruit Loops with passion fruit, lime zest and marshmallows.

So now the cereal has a story behind it, and NOW you can charge $7.50. If it doesn’t work, they can always go back to the talking corn flake.

I’d pay $7.50 for that. I don’t think I could bring myself to eat it, though.

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