Almost a year after it spun off into a standalone cereal business, WK Kellogg Co is succeeding in its mission to grow its market share in the breakfast category.
Nine of WK Kellogg’s eleven biggest brands are growing faster than the cereal category as a whole, CEO Gary Pilnick told investors last week. At the company’s annual Barclays conference, Pilnick said WK Kellogg Co’s grasp of its business is much stronger than it was before the spinoff, as it is able to focus solely on one product area within its supply chain.
“Now that all we do is cereal, the speed to go from idea to shelf to pantry is frictionless,” Pilnick said.
The CEO said going from a workforce of 38,000 under the larger Kellogg umbrella to just 3,000 workers at its dedicated ready-to-eat cereal plants has allowed the company to hone in on cereal-specific issues. Pilnick said recent investments in its supply chain will help it meet demand for its products at different price and packaging points.
“We’re now going to leapfrog what we are able to do today to what we can do tomorrow, and that’s going to be a meaningful difference with our new platforms,” Pilnick said. “We’re gonna be getting out of aging technology and adopting new technology, which will give us flexibility to make our current foods, but other foods as well.”
According to Pilnick, WK Kellogg Co believes there are a “variety” of different ways it will be able to grow its business going forward, including focusing on e-commerce and new packaging formats for its products.
When asked about WK Kellogg Co’s innovation pipeline, the CEO noted that new innovations across the cereal category has underperformed in 2024 while legacy brands, like Frosted Flakes, succeeded. He believes the new cereal products the company has in store for next year will allow it to fully flex its muscle as a standalone business for the first time.
“2025 is the first innovation set that we are delivering to the market that was created by WK Kellogg, because 2024’s would have been created before the spin. We’ve created this now as a team,” Pilnick said. “What you can expect in the innovation set is it’s across the breadth of our portfolio, wellness, taste, balance across our brand.”
Earlier this year, WK Kellogg Co debuted a better-for-you cereal brand targeted at Gen Z, Eat Your Mouth Off, which contains zero sugar and is sweetened by stevia.
The CEO’s positive outlook follows a disappointing earnings report for the company last month, which saw a 2.7% drop in sales compared to the year prior. In August, the company announced its plans to shutter its Omaha, Nebraska plant and scale back production at its Memphis, Tennessee facility in 2025, leading to 550 job cuts. WK Kellogg Co plans to shift production to its other cereal facilities.
