Post Has Good News For Grape-Nuts Fans
The beginning of 2021 saw the latest of the pandemic shortages: Grape-Nuts. However, Post Consumer Brands has announced that having heard the lamentations shared on social media over the cereal's disappearance, they will ensure that Grape-Nuts will be properly restocked by mid-March.
"We recognize that the temporary Grape-Nuts shortage has been frustrating to fans given that Grape-Nuts is a one-of-a-kind cereal and there is no other cereal like it on the market," Kristin DeRock, Grape-Nuts brand manager at Post Consumer Brands, said in a press release shared with Mashed. "We ramped up production and are running full swing 51 out of the next 55 days."
As an added olive branch, Grape-Nuts has also initiated a sweepstakes that will give 10 fans free Grape-Nuts for a year. Fans can register through the brand's Facebook page. They also ask you to opt into their email waitlist, which will inform people of the cereal's return once it happens. Doing so will get you a $1.50 coupon off of a Grape-Nuts purchase. Additionally, there is the new Grape-Nuts Secret Super Fans Facebook page, which hosts unique offers and ways to interact with the brand.
The story of Grape-Nuts' disappearance
Grape-Nuts disappeared due to the irregular demand spikes now associated with the economy under the pandemic. At first, as CBS reported in January, fans of the brand feared its discontinuance. "Grape-Nuts is made using a proprietary technology and a production process that isn't easily replicated, which has made it more difficult to shift production to meet demand during this time," Kristin DeRock explained.
When Vice asked the brand to elaborate on these production difficulties and name which cereals were prioritized over Grape-Nuts, Post declined to comment. That said, Vice does refer to a Wall Street Journal account of how the cereal is made by baking a barley dough into 10-pound loaves, cutting the dough into pieces, leaving the pieces to dry for three hours, and bashing the dried pieces into bits. Presumably, scaling proved a massive hurdle.
So, between the increase of breakfasts consumed at home due to Americans living in lockdown and the difficulty in producing the cereal, Post Consumer Brands struggled to keep up with the voracious demand. However, as stated, that shortage should come to an end soon. In the meantime, Grape-Nuts promises to spread love to its fans on Valentine's Day through its various social media accounts (via Twitter).