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January 07, 2007
Kellogg's Cereal City USA Museum
So, the downtown Battle Creek museum that was supposed to replace cereal plant tours, and 250,000 plant visitors, has closed its doors. With few visitors and a big deficit after ten years.
But lets not start throwing bricks and bats at the good folks and funders who supported startup of Kellogg's Cereal City USA at a time when Battle Creek and its downtown was going down the tank....or the toilet.
They TRIED to make the museum cereal-industry wide (including Post and Ralston), rather than just Kellogg's.
AND they at least tried a new idea to attract tourists when the cereal plant tours died.
There were two additional factors not covered in the recent Battle Creek Enquirer newspaper editorial on this topic:
1) the cereal city musem was in the wrong building and the wrong location -- should have been near highway Interstate-94 and
2) the museum relied on all us pre and near boomer babies to bring their kids and grandkids to Cereal City USA. WE remember the cereal plant tours, the inbox and boxtop collectables with love and nostaliga (that bathtub submarine that operated with soda powder...etc.) and equated breakfast cereal and collectables with good times and our childhood at the breakfast table and the mail box.
Today's kids -- 'rather have coke and a donut for breakfast.'
Cereal collectables? Kids rather have a new cell phone.
"Grand pa?, Can we leave now?," my grand daughter said to me a few months ago as we went through Kellogg's Cereal City USA.
But no bricks or brickbats, please.
Thanks BC leaders for trying out the museum idea.
Lots of good things still in this small town!
And bet there will be a new, better use for the building.
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Comments
I'm sorry to see the closing of Kellogg's Cereal City USA. I think it was a good idea, it just was run poorly.
When the building was under construction, a representative of the facility came to a chuch meeting and made a presentation of what was coming, because we had some questions of how this 'pay to enter' facility was going to replace the 'free' factory tours fazed out in the 1980's.
We were told that one project would be to get citizens of Battle Creek to think of the facility as the 'town square'. They wanted to have weekly concerts on the lawn during the summer so families could bring a blanket and picnic basket and enjoy the beautify river location. Their hope was that people would go into the building to use the restrooms and possibly puchase some ice cream or snack. That eventually people would feel comfortable using the building.
They hoped with that comfortable feeling, people would start using the building to hold meetings and parties. Well, that never came to fruition.
Another thing they just couldn't figure out, was that the free factory tours involved actually seeing cereal being made, not a plastic facsimile with fake corn flakes and a taped message of what happened in the pressure cookers. Part of the fun of seeing the cereal being made at the factory was actually seeing the cereal being made.
When the Kellogg's Cereal City USA was in the planning phase, it was decided that it would be to dangerous and costly to actually be 'making the cereal' on the tour...that decision was the 'make or break' moment of success.
The people running the facility didn't follow through with making the place something that brought local residents back. After you'd seen it once, that was it.
That brings me to another rather unpopular point of view I hold. Instead of searching the country to find people to run these venues, hire someone locally. Someone with a vested interest in the success of a project.
It seems that during my lifetime the way of hiring someone for a job requires a 'professional headhunter' to comb the country for a candidate. I'm sure it sometimes works, but in my experience, a person is brought in to run a facility like Cereal City USA, they set it up, pat themselves on the back for doing a great job, put the project on their resume and off they go to another job. It doesn't seem to work for those of us left behind who can't find anything to pat.
Oh well, I hope someone can come in and use the facility for something good. We need a Battle Creek history museum and I hope with this ending, a new beginning for a museum can come.
Posted by: kurt thornton | January 07, 2007
Where I can find good quality films?
Can anyone help me?
Posted by: rifyalkaptala | November 09, 2007