The next Krispy Kreme

As someone who’s married to a cereal addict, my view on this might be skewed, but I predict that a year from now Cereality will be talked about the same way Krispy Kreme was a few years ago. It’s a restaurant that serves only breakfast cereal and cereal-related products. Here’s one story by Howard Shapiro of the Philadelphia Inquirer on the opening of their new eatery near Penn:

As suppertime approached last night, the line started to form inside Cereality, the nation’s first all-cereal restaurant, just opened in University City. Plenty of college kids and people who think they are still college kids were finding comfort and sustenance in the ultimate fast food, which comes from a box…. In an age when breakfast is becoming more experimental, when some restaurants find sixth and seventh grains to mix into pancakes and spoon caviars of many colors onto egg plates, plain old cold cereal remains a clear American staple. This is particularly so for many young adults, who may have grown up fleeing into the pantry for some Cap’n Crunch whenever their parents were licking their dinner chops over yucky-looking raw-fish rolls and icky foreign-tasting meats. Thus Cereality, which opened to hoopla and speeches and live remotes Wednesday and had its first real-world day of business yesterday. It’s at 3631 Walnut St., on the same block with Cosi, which was actually serving sandwiches last night at dinnertime, and Penne, the restaurant at the Inn at Penn, where the kitchen staff was grilling veal tenderloins and honey-glazed sea scallops, with nary a box of Frosted Flakes in sight. But even Angel Hogan, Penne’s manager, was impressed with the fare up the street. She’d gone over for a specialty cereal – not the basic Cereality offering of two scoops of anything with one topping for $2.95. Hers was oatmeal with bananas, apple streusel and molasses, “really delicious,” she said. “It was like eating in Grandma’s kitchen.”

According to the company’s web site: “If there’s not already a Cereality near you, there will be soon. In 2004, we will be opening several new units in a variety of settings.” And here’s the menu. If they expand to university neighborhoods, this will be huge. Huge. [Isn’t the Krispy Kreme metaphor problematic, given their recent financial troubles?–ed. Nope, it’s dead on — I see a few years of awesome growth, followed by the passing of the fad.] UPDATE: Several commenters have argued that the Krispy Kreme logic doesn’t apply, because cereal can be procured and eaten (more cheaply) at home compared to Krispy Kremes. This may be true — but I doubt that any home has the variety of cereal choices available at Cereality, or the variety of toppings. Consider a different example — Coldstone Creamery ice cream parlors. Ice cream can be bought and consumed at home, but that does not prevent ice cream stores from thriving. One last thought — these stores would be like gold in airport terminals. Gold.