W.K. Kellogg / Kellogg Company

At the age of fourteen, Will Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) began working as a salesman for his father’s broom business. Later, he worked with his brother, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In 1894 John, assisted by Will, developed a successful cereal flake. It was first served to the patients at the sanitarium and later sold by the Sanitas Food Company. In 1906 W. K. Kellogg launched his own food company to sell Toasted Corn Flakes cereal. The company grew to be the largest manufacturer of ready-to-eat cereals in the world. Kellogg’s early personal philanthropies included assistance to rural teachers, to British children orphaned by war, to the blind, and to a number of hospitals and medical programs. In 1930 the W. K. Kellogg Foundation was established to promote the health and well-being of children. Today it is among the world’s largest philanthropic organizations. Kellogg Company Will Keith Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906. He manufactured his first boxes of cereal in a three-story building on Bartlett Street at the rate of thirty-three cases per day. In 1907 the original factory building was destroyed by fire, and part of the present structure was erected on this site. Kellogg Company sold more than one million cases of cereal in 1909, and by 1911 the company’s advertising budget had reached $1 million. In 1917 production capacity reached 9 million boxes per day. In 1980 United States production of Kellogg’s ready-to-eat cereals required more than 110,000 bushels of corn, 225,000 pounds of bran, 9,000 bushels of wheat and 12,000 pounds of wheat germ each day. By its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1981, Kellogg Company had forty-seven plants operating in twenty-one countries.