This is Kellogg's corn flakes cereal. It may seem like a simple breakfast,
but it took years to perfect. No one knew how to make it. That was until two brothers discovered
the truth after thousands of tries. Mold. By rolling moldy dough into thin
flakes, and baking them, they had finally created the perfect recipe. Soon, the world would be introduced
to their corn flakes cereal, but it came at their expense. This video is sponsored by Runescape! Re-explore the world of Runescape with Fresh Start Worlds, the 4-month event exclusive to members, where players can experience a completely reset RuneScape with a new account. Play with your friends like it’s the first time in this high fantasy open MMORPG, exploring the ever-changing and evolving world, where you shape how your own character adventures along with quests, and grows their skills with exciting challenges. In Runescape’s Fresh Start Worlds, all players start as equals with fresh characters from scratch, playing in a reset world with a new economy and Grand Exchange. Whether you’re a complete beginner in Runescape or jumping in again after a hiatus, there’s something new for everyone. Grow your skills at an accelerated pace, with an increased XP rate and gameplay buffs during the first 8 weeks. You can move your new character to the main game at any time with the progressions and rewards earned during Fresh Start Worlds! Get 7 days of membership through Amazon’s Prime Gaming, or click our link in the description to download Runescape and experience Fresh Start Worlds today! Before the introduction of
cereal, breakfast was an ordeal. Even if you wanted simple porridge, you
had to wake up hours before breakfast, start a fire, and melt whole grains. Breakfasts were often cured meats,
potatoes fried in fat, and foods high in animal fats, salt, and sugar. These greasy foods plagued Americans
with painful stomach aches. But that would change
with the Kellogg brothers. John Kellogg was born in 1852
to John Preston and Ann Janette. His parents became Seventh-Day
Adventists shortly after his birth. The family moved from a rural community
in Livingston County to Jackson, Michigan. Three years later, they moved to
Battle Creek, the location of the Adventist Church headquarters. When John was eight, his
little brother, Will, was born. Will was the seventh of 16 children
his parents had, but many of them did not survive childhood. Seventh-Day Adventists practiced
strict lifestyles and preached health and purity as religious duties. This profoundly affected John, whose
life work upheld these principles. Though he was smaller than his
siblings and very sickly — almost losing his life to tuberculosis — John
grew up as the golden child. He was far and away his mother’s favorite,
and recognized as brilliant from a young age. He loved to read and learn on his own and
when he did go to school at age 10, he surpassed his classmates in all topics. At age 12, the Adventist church recognized
his intelligence and decided to nurture it. The church’s publisher, James White,
took John in as an apprentice. John spent four years as a
publishing apprentice for the church. During this time, he read many
articles written by Ellen G. White that influenced him. Ellen was the church’s prophetess. She often wrote about health and
hygiene improvements for the community. Intrigued, John began studying other
health reformers, with a focus on diet. On the other hand, poor Will began life
already in his older brother’s shadow. His father believed Will was so unintelligent
that teaching him to read was a waste of time. At school, his teachers said he was responsible
but slow to learn and not very bright. Many years later, Will discovered
the reason for his struggles in school: he was severely nearsighted. He couldn’t read the blackboard
as a child without glasses. On top of all of Will’s troubles,
John bullied him without mercy. John insulted his brother, played mean pranks,
and tattled on him to ensure cruel punishments. He also hit Will — badly enough that the
younger brother did not fully recover. Will spent his formative years
feeling intense insecurity. He never felt smart enough, loved
enough, or deserving of good things. As his parents didn’t think there was
any point in educating him past age 10, Will dropped out when he was 13. He began working full-time at his father’s
broom factory, where he became a strong worker. Will supervised the other boys and was
supporting himself as a salesman by age 14. Meanwhile, John continued on his shining path. He attended medical school at
Bellevue College in New York City. John’s interest in diet and
digestion had intensified in college. He saw the epidemic of indigestion in the
country and blamed the common American diet. This began John's lifelong war
against fried food, meat, seafood, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. John graduated from medical school at 24. The next year, the young doctor took charge of
a health facility in Battle Creek, Michigan. The small facility had been opened 10 years
earlier by Ellen, the Adventist prophet. John turned it into a medical center, spa,
and hotel called the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Guests could cleanse their bodies with
baths, enemas, exercises, and diet reforms. At Battle Creek, guests ate a diet of
wheat gluten mush, oatmeal crackers, graham rolls, and a grass tea. Meat was avoided. John believed meat products remained
in your gut after a meal and would rot and pollute your body. He claimed the meat's toxins
caused indigestion, bloating, depression, and even stupidity. A healthy gut was very important
to Americans at the time. Everyone was concerned about
digestion, even American presidents. Battle Creek became a celebrity destination,
and many went for John's treatments. The list of the Sanitarium's guests
includes Presidents Warren Harding and William Taft, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas
Edison, Henry Ford, and Amelia Earheart. To ensure smooth operations, John hired
his brother, Will, as his assistant. Will worked 17-hour days to make
the sanitarium run, with hardly a word of thanks from his brother. Will managed payroll, bills, guest complaints,
publicity, marketing, and daily operations. He launched and managed many Battle
Creek spinoff businesses, including a publishing company and a clothing line. No matter how hard he worked, though, the
doctor looked down on him and even called him lazy when he wanted to see his family. Still, Will continued to work at the
sanitarium nonstop, along with being John’s personal valet, shoe shiner, and notetaker. Will would even have to jot down notes
while running after John as he rode his bicycle or while standing by the stall as
his brother relieved himself on the toilet. For all his work and suffering, and
never getting to see his family, Will brought home only $87 a month. In his diary, he wrote, “I feel kind of blue. Am afraid that I will always be a
poor man the way things look now.” Will couldn’t see any light
at the end of the tunnel. But an opportunity was coming
to life right in front of him. At Battle Creek, John served foods that
would help keep one’s digestive tracts clear. One of these early foods was zwieback bread:
a double-baked, dry, and tasteless biscuit, served without butter, water, or milk. Most guests hated the dry bread, and
one woman even broke her dentures on it. After she stormed into John’s office
to demand money for a replacement, the doctor set out to find a way to make it
more easily digestible and healthier. John believed baking the grains at a high
temperature for a long time would help. After trying it out, he discovered that
this process broke down the sugar and starch content and that when the loaves
were cooled, he could slice and push them through a strainer to produce crumbs. John called the product Granula and
served it to his sanitarium guests. Will sensed an opportunity and came up with
an idea for a mail-order company for Granula. This way, people could keep up the
sanitarium diet even outside of Battle Creek. Unfortunately, the sanitarium’s
board of directors didn’t see the value in John’s health foods. Ignoring them, John founded a new
venture called Battle Creek Sanitarium Health Food Company and gave Will a
25% share in exchange for running it. Meanwhile, other doctors and
dieticians in America were developing very similar health foods. One man, Dr. James Jackson, had already
created a ready-to-eat cereal that was also named Granula. James sued John, resulting in John
renaming his product “Granola.” Another competitor was lawyer Henry Perky. He had a product made from raw
wheat called Shredded Wheat. One day, a Battle Creek Sanitarium
patient told John that Shredded Wheat had helped her digestion. John went to Denver to meet Henry and
the two bonded over their shared ideas. The doctor made an offer to buy
Shredded Wheat from Henry, but then gave a lower offer that Henry refused. To make matters worse, Henry also
took John’s idea about baking at high temperatures for a long time. This made Shredded Wheat
much more pleasant to eat. The product became one of the
most popular cereals in America. Will was especially frustrated
and discouraged about the loss. John swore that the brothers would invent
a better food and win out in the end. Both eager to achieve that goal, the two
continued to experiment with recipes in their kitchen laboratory — leading to the
creation of their wheat flakes cereal recipe. The brothers tell different stories about the
creation of the wheat flakes cereal recipe. And while historians were unable to verify
which is true, we do know that the invention involved thousands of tries and one mistake. In John’s story, it was in his wife Ella’s
kitchen that the recipe was invented. Equipped with a degree in nutrition, she
assisted John on thousands of trials, with both of them making suggestions. John also claims that a dream told
him to roll the dough into thin films to be scraped off before baking. The doctor states that one night
when he and Ella were working, he was called away for emergency surgery. He left the dough and continued
the process a day later, even though the dough had grown mold. To their shock, the cereal
flakes were now perfect. In Will’s story, he and John
were both important partners contributing to the perfect recipe. One Friday, they were working and decided to
get some rest after several 14-hour workdays. Will, always looking to save business
costs, placed the fresh dough into a container instead of throwing it out. The next day was the Adventist Sabbath,
and the brothers could not work. It was after midnight when they
returned to the experiment. Though the dough had moldened, they
continued to roll, scrape, and bake it. The brothers discovered that it now
resulted in beautiful, ideal flakes. Re–gardless of the exact version of events,
wheat flakes cereal had been invented. The brothers served the flakes during a
conference for Seventh-day Adventists. Everyone at Battle Creek loved the
cereal flakes and lined up for more. The cereal was found to be especially tasty
when mixed with milk, cream, or yogurt. J-ohn named the cereal “Granose.”
It was great for guests’ digestion and cured their stomach aches. The doctor patented the recipe as the sole
owner, once again overlooking his brother. Will hired bakers and workers
to help produce Granose. In one year, they sold and served almost
115,000 pounds of the wheat flakes cereal. After three years, Will rented out a
building to serve as a production factory. The factory operated 24/7 and Will
was working 120 hours every week. He juggled duties at the Sanitarium,
the Granose factory, and Battle Creek’s publishing house and its other companies. Will’s biggest success came
from a very simple realization. While people with severe indigestion issues
bought Granose, many more would buy a convenient breakfast if it just tasted good. He began to fiddle with the cereal recipe,
looking for the perfect, tasty result. But he was already far behind a competitor
who was capitalizing on the cereal market. Charley Post was a former patient
at Battle Creek Sanitarium. He had painful indigestion issues, used
a wheelchair, and was in poor health. Charley and his wife frequented
the sanitarium during the day when its treatments were cheaper. The couple had very little money. To pay the bills, Charley assisted Will
with recipes in the kitchen laboratory. After a year at the sanitarium,
Charley paid up his bill and left. He purchased a land plot 10
miles outside of Battle Creek and opened a medical boarding house. Then, Charley began to produce and
sell health foods under the name C. W. Post. One of his products was Postum, a direct
copy of John’s “Minute Brew,” a coffee substitute made from caramelized molasses. But C. W. Post’s most popular item was cereal. His first one, Grape Nuts, was
identical to Battle Creek's Granola, but with maltose sweetener added. It was a hit. The Kelloggs’ cereal sales were
insignificant compared to Charley’s. As Charley had seen their recipes
while working in the kitchen, the Kellogg brothers knew he’d stolen them. By then, Will had become quite the businessman
and grew frustrated that someone else was making a fortune off the Kellogg cereals. Will desperately wanted to expand the
business, but John always shot down his ideas. Fed up, Will finally decided to leave. He told his brother that he was quitting the
sanitarium to focus on the food industry. He packed up his desk and, for the
first time in his life, set out to be free from John’s control. Unfortunately, tragedy struck
and ruined Will’s plans. Six months after he quit, the
sanitarium’s night watchman came upon an enormous fire in the pharmacy. Firefighters responded only a minute
later and extinguished the flames. But before they could pack up, the
ground underneath them collapsed. They were on top of an underground tunnel
and realized that the source of the fire was still burning in the tunnel. They tried to combat the
flames, but it was too late. Battle Creek Sanitarium burned to the ground. Will was torn. Battle Creek, where he had spent
20 years, was his life’s work. John was out of town the day of the
fire, so Will met with the board of directors and offered to return for free. He spent two-and-a-half more
years at the sanitarium. Having to go back to work for his brother,
without pay, and with the new responsibility of securing funds, made for a miserable time. Will recalled those years
as the worst in his life. Battle Creek had its grand
opening two years after the fire. Will continued to run operations, a
monumental task with the new sanitarium that now employed several hundred employees. Still, Will found time to try and improve
the Kellogg cereal recipes which now included wheat flakes and corn flakes. One day, Will decided to experiment with
the corn flakes cereal recipe by adding ingredients his brother would never
allow him to use — like salt, sugar, and malt — and use only the grit of the corn. The result was crunchier, crispier
flakes with a nutty, corny, pleasant taste that consumers were sure to love. Unfortunately, when Will perfected the
recipe, Charley copied that as well and sold the cereal as Post Toasties. While millions of boxes of Post Toasties
were being sold, Will remained undeterred on bringing his recipe to market. There was just one problem. He knew John would never agree since
they contained ingredients that went against the sanitarium diet. Desperate, Will offered to buy the
cereal part of the business from John. John only agreed since he was in debt and
didn’t believe that Will could succeed. Will had to give John
$170,000 in cash and shares. Will wound up in deep debt
to venture on his own. But that would quickly become
the least of his problems. Only one year after Will founded his new
business, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, his factory burned to the ground. It would take a year for the factory
to be rebuilt but Will wasted no time in continuing business. He ordered his employees to work in a different
location and even launched clever campaigns, including advertising to mothers and children
through full-page newspaper ads and putting coupons, then surprise prizes, in cereal boxes. Around this time, Will also made a huge
branding change: renaming his business the Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company and
displaying his signature on cereal boxes that now featured bright red and green colors. Soon after, Will was selling more boxes than
ever before — over 100,000 cases per day. Meanwhile, John was fuming. The sanitarium struggled to fill Will’s
shoes after he left, and was not well run. And while Will was selling his
cereals, John was unable to happily watch his brother succeed. The spiteful doctor began making
his own cereals to compete with his brother’s corn flakes. One was a cereal made of rice flakes, and
the other was sterilized wheat bran flakes. John then launched his cereals under the name,
The Kellogg’s Food Company of Battle Creek, and packaged them in boxes similar to Will’s. Both grocers and customers got
confused and thought the two brothers’ products were from the same company. Will sued John for copyright infringement,
and John countersued in response. All in all, the Kellogg brothers’
court battle raged on for 10 years. A jealous and bitter John dragged on legal
proceedings as Will’s business — later renamed the Kellogg company — boomed. John made various claims that Will
was hurting his business and made threats to sue to wear Will down. John argued that he had a worldwide
reputation as a top doctor and that the name “Kellogg” was tied to his image. He said that Will’s abilities and
contributions to cereal were minimal. According to John, he himself had
invented flaked cereal, among other foods. He argued that the famous Kellogg’s
signature on Will’s cereal was an attempt to exploit John’s reputation. On the other side of the fight,
Will claimed that John had intentionally copied Wil’s branding. He said the doctor wanted to
capitalize on and steal Will's success. According to Will, the brothers were
equal partners in inventing flaked cereal. But the changes from the original recipe to
corn flakes belonged only to Will himself. Somehow, the two sides came to
an agreement outside of court. John acknowledged that Will’s company was
the only owner of the “Kellogg’s” brand. This meant only Will could
use the name on products. In exchange, Will allowed John to call
his company “Kellogg Food Company.” However, John wasn't allowed to noticeably
display the Kellogg name on his cereal. The peace between brothers did not last long. One of John’s cereals, made of sterilized wheat
bran, was invented as a cure to constipation. When the product picked up in sales, John
had jumped on the rising interest and used his brother’s mass advertising techniques. Soon enough, John was selling over half
a million boxes of his cereal per year. The box prominently showed the Kellogg
name, but the doctor argued that this did not break the agreement between brothers. He said the agreement concerned only corn
fakes, while he was selling wheat bran. To retaliate, Will began to sell
two types of Kellogg’s bran that were similar to John's product. They were instant hits. John then filed a restraining order
against his younger brother, and the two once again wound up in court. The judge not only ruled in Will’s
favor but also said the profits John had made from cereals in the past
10 years actually belonged to Will. The doctor was ordered to stop
trying to manipulate the public by using the Kellogg name. John immediately appealed the case
to the Michigan Supreme Court. Every one of the eight members of the
State Supreme court voted in Will’s favor and upheld the judge’s decision. Will owned the Kellogg name, as
well as any money John had made from cereals branded as Kellogg’s. The court also ordered John to pay Will’s
legal bills, which were more than $225,000. Will told his brother to
pay only the legal bills. He was willing to forget about
the profit payment, but John was too proud to accept the offer. He wrote Will a check for the full
amount, saying that now they would have no reason to bother each other. John’s words were true. For the rest of their lives, the brothers
hardly spoke a word to each other. They both lived very long lives,
with Will building his cereal business and John continuing to
focus on health and the sanitarium. In his final years, John felt remorse for his
lifelong bullying of his younger brother and even dictated a seven-page letter to Will. In the letter, John regretted his behavior
and wanted to make up for his mistakes. He congratulated Will on his achievements
and said that Will’s name would be remembered for generations to come. John never got a response to his letter. The brothers’ last face-to-face
meeting was a year later. The doctor invited Will over, hoping to secure
a loan to lift the sanitarium out of debt. Will insisted that John step away
from the sanitarium for good. The conversation started off as civil but
became tense as they brought up past arguments. The next year, John passed
away at the age of 91. He developed viral paralysis that
left him bedridden before he fell into a coma and took his last breath. Five years later, the mystery of why Will never
responded to his brother's apology was solved. John’s secretary had never
delivered the letter. She thought it was embarrassing
to the great doctor and showed weakness and a loss of reasoning. She put the letter into a file cabinet, where
it stayed until being found and delivered to Will, six years after John’s death. By the time Will received the letter,
he was blind from glaucoma and needed his nurse to read it out loud to him. Overcome with emotion, Will was silent. Tears filled his eyes. For the rest of his days, he carried a picture
of his brother’s gravestone in his wallet. Three years later, Will developed leukemia and
passed away at the same age as his brother, 91. Sadly, very few family members
wept at his passing and those who did also felt a great relief. Will had been a stern, unforgiving old man
whose harsh behavior ended his marriage and distanced his children and grandchildren. In the following years, the Kellogg company
became widely known all over the U.S. and the rest of the world. First, the company launched new cereals
and created mascots for each one, including Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, and Pop,
Toucan Sam, and Cornelius the Rooster. Kellogg also expanded into other types of
breakfast and snack foods, including Pop Tarts, Eggo, Pringles, and Nutri-Grain bars. Today, the company is one of the largest
food companies in America and is rated as one of the most valuable food brands worldwide
— bringing in over $14 billion in revenue. This is the story of how two brothers who
were both brilliant in their fields but ruthless in business invented one of the
most famous breakfast foods in the world. For more interesting stories about
today’s biggest companies, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel! Remember to click our link in the description to play Runescape’s Fresh Start Worlds to experience the world of Gielinor from scratch, today!
