General Mills Partners with Hershey’s to Give You Kisses for Breakfast

With the start of the new year, General Mills is launching five new cereals, including three that will be launched in the first quarter of 2020. General Mills and Hershey’s partnered up to create several ready-to-eat cereals. These include Reese’s Puffs, Hershey’s Cookies and Crème Fillows Cereal, and Cocoa Puffs made with Hershey’ Chocolate.

Hershey’s will also introduce new Hershey’s Kisses cereal that features a chocolate-flavored cereal shaped like Hershey’s Kisses chocolates. This cereal will be available nationwide in January 2020 and is currently found in select stores.

Other cereal flavors to be introduced by General Mills include Jolly Rancher cereal which is a colorful and fruit-flavored cereal inspired by the hard candies. The pieces of fruity cereal include flavors such as grape, cherry, green apple, watermelon, and blue raspberry. This will be available nationwide in March 2020.

Moreover, General Mills teamed up with DreamWorks Pictures, the creators of Trolls, to create Trix Trolls with marshmallows. The cereal features colorful and sweetened corn puffs with bite-sized marshmallows.

Finally, with the launch of various cereals in 2020, General Mills are also set to launch a new Nature Valley Coconut Almond Granola. The cereal includes clusters of oat and honey granola with slices of almonds and toasted coconut shavings.

“I’m excited about the plans we have to build on our leadership position in cereal… We’re launching a strong lineup of innovation,” said Jeffrey L. Harmening, chairman and chief executive officer of General Mills.

According to Mintel Statistics, “43 percent US cereal consumers eat cereal as a snack at home, which ranks as the second most common reason to consume cereal aside from breakfast.” Moreover, 56 percent of millennials say they eat cereal as a snack at home which changes the ideologies that existed by the baby boomer generation regarding cereal as a breakfast meal. Thirty percent of consumers choose their cereal by the taste and flavor rather than by its nutritional value.

These cereal flavors seem to be a little less conventional compared to recent trends seen in the market. Nowadays, fewer Americans are eating cereal and milk for breakfast compared to the past with consumers reaching for more protein-packed options to fill them up in the morning. Therefore, the cereal manufacturing industry seems to be focusing less on better-for-you cereals and more on looking for new ways to allow consumers to indulge in cereals that are sugary and sweeter. Cereal may now be seen as less of a breakfast meal and more of a way to treat yourself with a bowl of something sweet and satisfying.