Cereal: The Underrated Meal

Cereal has been around since 1863, but it has been just treated as a breakfast since then. There have been new varieties of cereal that have been created since then, but most people typically stay to their usual cereal. No one wants to go out and buy a full box of cereal just to see if they might enjoy it or not. Buying cereal boxes these days are pretty expensive, so you have to make sure that you are going to enjoy the cereal you buy. However, what if there was a way where you could eat your normal cereal and also try new types of cereal?

This brings me to my business idea about a cereal shop. In this shop, you make different combinations of cereal and milk. Customers come in, choose from a variety of different cereal options, and select the milk they want. Each week, you can replace the less popular cereals with new types of cereal. The customers can experiment with different types of cereal and milk, and they will soon realize that they like cereal more than they previously thought which will make them come back again.

This idea is similar to the idea of self-serve frozen yogurt, but these shops have the ability to be much more profitable. The self-serve frozen yogurt shops have peaked. The business market already has a plethora of these shops. However, the self-serve cereal shops are basically nonexistent. Everyone has their own personal preference as to what type of frozen yogurt they enjoy because they have tried many different flavors and determined what they enjoyed. Most people have barely tried more than four different types of cereal in their life. There is such a big market of people who come to this place to try different flavors of cereal. If you can find a good location for your shop, the cereal shop could easily succeed and be profitable.

Now, I’ll talk about what the opposing view to this idea are. First of all, some people believe that cereal is just a breakfast thing. However, our current generation is changing this ideal as we see in big restaurants like McDonald's and Ihop too. People are willing to eat breakfast later in the day. A lot of people have cereal as a dessert too as a side to their dinner.

Also, people say that you can’t start a standalone cereal shop because it can not compare to ice cream and frozen yogurt. However, I’ll tell you a story about my cousin and I. We went to Pakistan for about a month, and we did not eat much American food. There was only food that we both missed, and it was not ice cream or frozen yogurt for sure. It was cereal. A lot of people enjoy cereal like this, but their desires have not been fulfilled in this market.

Overall, if you want to start a new-fresh business, you should open a cereal shop. The cereal market is really underdeveloped right now, and you could be the first to explore into this market. It is also really safe because if it does not work out then you can convert it into a frozen yogurt shop easily. If it does succeed, you can turn your shop into a franchise and control the market.