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Pilnick promoted a marketing campaign his company launched urging people to give “the chicken the night off” and instead consume bowls of Frosted Flakes and Frosted Mini-Wheats. These ads don’t explicitly advocate cereal as a cost-saving measure, but rather show it as a fun way to change up the family table routine. But Pilnick brought up the topic when CNBC host Carl Quintanilla asked him about rising prices at the supermarket.
“The cereal category has always been fairly affordable and tends to be a great destination when consumers are under pressure,” Pilnick said. “If you think about the cost of cereal for a family compared to what they could make otherwise, it will be much more affordable.”
When Quintanilla pressed him, wondering if that kind of pitch could “land the wrong way,” Pilnick doubled. “We don’t believe it,” he replied. “It’s actually working very well right now, Carl.”
Clips of the interview began appearing on social media, including a subreddit called /Not the onion where people share real news that appears to come from the satirical website The Onion. On Reddit, some people complained about the cost of cereal, corporate profits, and “counterinflation” (where the amount of food in a package is reduced, but the price remains the same), while others pointed out that sugary food Breakfast is not actually a good substitute for a nutritious meal.
One user summed up the mood with an old battle cry: “Eat the rich.”
“Hey, what stage of capitalism is this?” TikToker Julie (@hoolie_r) asked in a video which has been viewed more than 2.4 million times.
Some critics questioned whether the CEO, whose total compensation last year was $4.9 million (and that was before his promotion to the top job), was following his own company’s suggestion. “I wonder what cereal he and his family will eat for dinner?” an user published in X.
The anger was similar to the outrage that followed viral reports about the exorbitant prices of Big Macs, with bills for combo meals reaching as high as $18. People have also been posting images of their grocery purchases to show rising prices, and one TikToker illustrated the inflationary trends by posting a video showing how the $20 trip to the supermarket depicted in the 1990 film “Home Alone” would now cost almost three times as much. Even rapper Cardi B has been complaining about how much more you’re paying for lettuce these days.
The impact people feel from supermarket stickers is real. Prices in the category have outpaced inflation, rising 26 percent over the past four years. And they are likely to stay high: Food prices, once high, rarely fall. The cost of cereals and baked goods has increased more than 27 percent since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. government data shows.
While some of the increase is tied to ingredient costs, industry experts say fuel, labor and packaging are the biggest drivers of rising prices in the snack and cereal aisles. But Americans are still buying, leaving little incentive for snack conglomerates to lower prices.
Companies like Kellogg, which spun off its parent company last year and is now called Kellanova, find it easier to get their way because consumers are “pretty loyal to the category,” said Neil Saunders, the company’s CEO. GlobalData analysis. “It’s like a pleasure and a whim,” he added. “If prices go up a little, the consumer doesn’t really change their habits. Therefore, it is a kind of permission for manufacturers to pass on a little more of that increase.”