General Mills Closes Snack Subscription Service, Kellogg To Open One

corn_snacksSubscription boxes full of stuff, ranging from pet treats to makeup samples, are a hot category right now. That’s why it makes sense that General Mills and Kellogg, companies best known for their cold cereals, are interested in the market for curated selections of “natural” packaged snacks shipped to customers’ doorsteps. While General Mills is getting out of the snack-box biz, though, Kellogg is just entering the market.

General Mills’ service, called Nibblr, offered weekly, biweekly, or monthly boxes of snacks in small packages. The cereal giants were following established companies in that mini-industry, including Graze and NatureBox. The idea is to make money providing customers with snacks and with convenience instead of cereal, which turns into a commodity when users don’t have a preference for brands over generics.

Bloomberg News explains that Nibblr was around for about a year and a half, and the company claims that the service was a test project, which “provided great learning for our organization, and we chose to focus our resources on other projects.”

A Kellogg spokesperson said that the company is “always looking for new ways to reach our consumers,” and expanding their selection of “natural” foods, fuzzy though that term might be, is a good way to draw younger and health-conscious snackers who are apparently not so interested in cereal.

Kellogg Said to Plan Snack Subscriptions as General Mills Exits [Bloomberg]

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