The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the owners of Cold Stone Creamery, the upscale ice cream parlor chain, have acquired the Cereality Cereal Bar & Café concept. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The sale of Cereality came after the company decided to go the licensing/franchising route and closed down its company-owned stores, including the downtown Chicago location that generated a fair amount of media buzz when it opened. The Cereality founders are stepping down from the company, apparently believing that what is really needed now is the kind of franchising expertise that can be provided by Cold Stone.
The sale of Cereality came after the company decided to go the licensing/franchising route and closed down its company-owned stores, including the downtown Chicago location that generated a fair amount of media buzz when it opened. The Cereality founders are stepping down from the company, apparently believing that what is really needed now is the kind of franchising expertise that can be provided by Cold Stone.
- KC's View:
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I hope the new owners do a better job of internal communication than the previous managers did. My son worked at the Chicago Cereality for a brief time, and the only hints that something might be changing came when hours got cut back, paychecks were short, and it became tough to get anyone to even answer the phone at headquarters. (For a college student, those are hints; for someone of my advanced years, they were like a neon sign saying “get out while you can.”)
Cereality was so small that they probably didn’t hurt the brand; the buzz certainly outstripped the reality of what the company had become. Let’s see if the new guys can do anything with it.
