cookiesinheaven

...Food blogs "may not have the mass reach, but it's a more engaged, specific audience," said Greg Zimprich, a spokesman for General Mills Inc. "Their readers are going to care a lot more about a product of ours."

The Minneapolis food giant tracks dozens of small blogs devoted to rating foods. Most don't get more than a couple of thousand daily visits, but General Mills nevertheless sends off its cereal bars, soups and other packaged foods in hopes of a mention.

Keeping track of popular blogs is part of the job for nearly all the company's public relations officers, who use online services like Google alerts, BlogPulse and Technorati to track brand mentions. The blogs are often among the top links returned in online searches for certain brands or categories.

The way any given company reaches out to food blogs varies widely, of course.

The Hershey Co. invites bloggers to product launches along with the mainstream media. Kraft Foods Inc., which owns Post, makes it a point to keep blogs aware of all its newest products and even advertises on the more popular sites like HungryGirl and Best of the Bite, said Sydney Lindner, a company spokeswoman. - SFGate

Labels: blogs, General Mills, Hershey

Cheerios, originally called Cheerioats, were invented by Lester Borchardt back in 1941, but Cheerios almost didn't happen.

Les and his team were working on the machine to puff cereal, like Cheerios, but his boss wanted them to stop the project. Les insisted they go on, and two months later, Cheerios was born.

"Some people referred to him as a genius, and I do think he was," said Les' Daughter-in-Law Mary Borchardt.

Years ago Les' granddaughter drank a bottle of furniture polish. Cheerios may have helped save her life.

"So we took her to the emergency and had her stomach pumped. The doctor came out and said if she hadn't had such a good breakfast of Cheerios and milk, she would have not made it," said Mary Borchardt.

Les' family said he was humble and didn't talk about all his inventions and patents. He had 11 of them and he also helped come up with the process to fortify milk with vitamin D.

He worked at General Mills for more than 35 years and his daughter said he ate Cheerios just about every morning of his life. - WCCO

...In a brief autobiography he wrote after retiring, Borchardt said he took pride in bucking his corporate bosses when he felt it was necessary. He discussed one research team's work on a piece of equipment used in the production of breakfast cereals like Cheerios.

A worker came up with an idea for increasing the machine's output, so Borchardt decided it was worth pursuing to see whether it would work.

"Two years and $150,000 later my superior passed on to me the word that his superior felt that the time had come to terminate the projects," Borchardt wrote. But Borchardt said his staff thought they were close to a breakthrough, so he stood his ground.

Two months later, the project was a success. At the time he retired, Borchardt said, the company estimated the process was saving it $1 million a year. - St. Paul Press

Labels: Borchardt, Cereal, Cheerios, General Mills, Passings