General Mills

MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios and Wheaties, passed Kellogg Co. for the first time as the largest U.S. cereal maker based on revenue.General Mills held 32.5 percent of the U.S. market based on dollars spent for the 12-week period that ended Dec. 6, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Nomi Ghez, citing sales data collected by Information Resources Inc. That beats the 31.6 percent share notched by Kellogg.General Mills is succeeding by developing variations of its best-known brands such as Chex and new products including Cinnamon Toast Crunch that aren't readily copied by makers of discount and generic cereals.

MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios and Wheaties, passed Kellogg Co. for the first time as the largest U.S. cereal maker based on revenue.General Mills held 32.5 percent of the U.S. market based on dollars spent for the 12-week period that ended Dec. 6, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Nomi Ghez, citing sales data collected by Information Resources Inc. That beats the 31.6 percent share notched by Kellogg.General Mills is succeeding by developing variations of its best-known brands such as Chex and new products including Cinnamon Toast Crunch that aren't readily copied by makers of discount and generic cereals.

WHERE CAN you go that's air-conditioned, free, entertaining, in the neighborhood and always chock-full of information?The Brooklyn Park library offers a Maryland Science Center program, "Brain Benders: Exciting Scientific Phenomena." The 60-minute program demonstrates scientific events that produce effects opposite of what participants might expect.The program also demonstrates how the laws of physics apply to everyday actions. Participants can learn about the scientific method, air pressure and the center of gravity.

MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills Inc. raised the price of its breakfast cereals an average of 2.6 percent yesterday, saying the company needs to adjust for inflation and possibly signaling the end of a costly price war.General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Wheaties, Trix and other popular cereals, has seen its costs rise "on everything across the board," from wages to material costs, spokesman David Dix said. The price increase is effective immediately.Food companies, reacting to consumer complaints, started to slash prices on breakfast cereals more than a year ago. Cereal company earnings have since been squeezed, with General Mills last week reporting a 12 percent decline in fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, more than expected.

WASHINGTON -- General Mills Inc.'s purchase of Chex cereal brands from Ralcorp Holdings Inc. got clearance yesterday from U.S. antitrust authorities, who moved to promote price competition for Chex, the key ingredient in a popular snack.General Mills, America's second-largest cereal maker, agreed to drop noncompete restrictions on the sale of private-label versions of Chex as a condition of Federal Trade Commission antitrust approval for its $570 million purchase of Chex and other products from Ralcorp.

Two years after Ellicott brothers Joseph, Andrew and John settled in the area that would bear their name, they developed Ellicott City's first industry -- a flour mill on the banks of the Patapsco River on what is now Frederick Road.Two centuries later -- true to the town's roots -- a flour mill still stands on that spot.But the similarities between the original and the modern mill end there.The Ellicotts milled 150 barrels of flour a day using grindstones powered by the river. Today, the river is a scenic backdrop to an 11-acre manufacturing plant that uses million-dollar machines to mill and package 350,000 pounds of flour a day, along with thousands of pounds of cornmeal, baking mixes and poultry breading.

IF THE NEW Betty Crocker, unveiled this spring by General Mills, were a real person, the U.S. Census Bureau wouldn't know what to do with her.It doesn't know what to do about millions of other Americans who don't fit neatly into the arbitrary categories the Census Bureau continues to use. And time is running out to bring the once-a-decade head count into sync with today's racial realities.Betty Crocker is no longer depicted as a white suburban mom. She has grown less matronly and more businesslike as General Mills has updated her image repeatedly.

Times Mirror Co. yesterday named a veteran General Mills Inc. executive to take over for retiring Chairman, President and Chief Executive Robert F. Erburu.Mark H. Willes, 53, vice chairman for the Minneapolis-based food and restaurant company, will become president and chief executive of the Los Angeles-based media company on June 1 '' and will assume the title of chairman on Jan. 1.In a prepared statement released last night, Mr. Willes said Times Mirror, which publishes The Sun and The Evening Sun, and other communications companies are at a crucial juncture.

Times Mirror Co.'s next boss is a former professor, former Federal Reserve president and veteran food executive who admits he has much to learn about the media business.Investors seem to think he may be just the person for the job. Times Mirror's stock rose by 5 percent yesterday on the news that Mark H. Willes, vice chairman of General Mills Inc., will become Times Mirror's next chairman, chief executive and president.Times Mirror is the Los Angeles-based parent of The Baltimore Sun Co., publisher of The Sun and The Evening Sun and, with 1,794 workers, one of the area's biggest employers.

The face that launched a thousand cake mixes is about to get a historic make-over as part of her 75th anniversary.Whether Betty Crocker's new visage will send consumers sailing for the grocery shelves remains to be seen. But one thing seems certain: The new Betty Crocker will depart from her 75-year-old ,, tradition of looking overly middle class -- and very white."We're sure to get a much more ethnically diverse looking Betty Crocker. She is intended to represent the women of America, and a lot has changed about women in America since the last portrait was done," said Barry Wegener, director of communications for General Mills, the Minneapolis-based food products giant that has marketed the Betty Crocker line since 1921.

"Extract" is an exuberant original. This daft farce about a man who has founded and run a successful flavor extract company and lost the sexual attention of his wife is a workplace film like no other and one of the best comedies of the year. The film has sharper testicle jokes than all of the Judd Apatow gang's recent farces put together, a poolside seduction that's organic and uproarious, and a streak of stoner-slacker humor that's like repeated hits from a bong that's actually good for you. If those accolades have a primal ring to them, it's because writer-director Mike Judge, who a decade ago made the ultimate cubicle movie, "Office Space," brings the brains of a satirical biologist to his view of life on a bottling line and in all the office nooks and crannies - and trailer parks and upscale suburbs - surrounding it. If the movie doesn't surge with unabated potency like classic screwball comedy, it's got its own erratic snap, crackle and pop. And the ensemble (including Jason Bateman as company owner Joel Reynold and Kristen Wiig as his wife, Suzie)

ROBERT B. CHOATE JR., 84 Led fight for cereal nutrition labels Robert B. Choate Jr., a self-styled "citizen lobbyist" who in the 1960s and 1970s played a vital role in exposing malnutrition in America and was best remembered for embarrassing cereal companies into providing nutritional labels on their boxes, died May 3 at a retirement community in Lemon Grove, Calif. He had a medical condition that prevented him from swallowing. Mr. Choate was a civil engineer before reinventing himself in the late 1950s as a philanthropist, and consumer advocate.

How does the future look for my shares of General Mills Inc.? It has so many popular brands I would think it would do even better than it has. - R.L., via the Internet As one of North America's largest packaged-food companies, it is indeed a company of champions: Wheaties, Cheerios, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Gold Medal, Hamburger Helper, Progresso and Yoplait. It is constantly introducing products, benefiting lately from new Fruity Cheerios and Caribou Coffee granola bars. Eighty new products will be launched in its current fiscal year, among them low-sugar Disney-branded cereals and Nature Valley cereals.

Shares of Martek Biosciences Corp. jumped as much as 14 percent yesterday after the Columbia biotech company said it landed a deal for its nutritional supplements to be used by General Mills. The cereal giant is expected to launch a food item using Martek's product next year, Martek said in a news release. Martek manufactures DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and some plants. Its product, which is derived from algae, is in more than two-thirds of the world's baby formula. Martek announced a similar deal last year with Kellogg Co., the country's No. 1 cereal maker.

Nine vendors whose companies include major names in the U.S. food industry were charged in federal court in New York yesterday with helping Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice Inc. perpetrate an $800 million accounting fraud that illustrated the pressure on suppliers to engage in a cover-up to maintain lucrative business relationships, attorneys said. The vendors, whose companies included General Mills Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc., were charged with aiding executives of U.S. Foodservice in producing false records that created the illusion of $800 million in added revenues over three years.

HOLLYWOOD - So by now you've probably heard about the 34-year-old woman from Findlay, Ohio, who put some crumbled up granola bars in a pie and won $1 million in the Pillsbury Bake-Off last week. As the cameras flashed and the tapes rolled, Suzanne Conrad, a former children's librarian who grew up in Havre de Grace, confessed how she came up with the winning recipe: "I couldn't bake an apple pie, so I made this one instead." Give a million dollars to a cook who can't make an apple pie?

Charles H. Bell, 95, son of General Mills founder James Ford Bell and a former company president, died Saturday in Santa Barbara, Calif. With his father and grandfather, Mr. Bell played a key role in shaping General Mills, the Golden Valley-based food maker. In his time at the helm, Mr. Bell broadened the company's holdings to include toys, clothing and retail. He joined General Mills in 1930 at age 22. During his 47 years at the company, he worked in accounting, auditing, sales, research and production.

MINNEAPOLIS - General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios and Wheaties cereals, said yesterday that its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 18 percent as the company sold more yogurt and snacks and reduced interest and other expenses. Net income for the quarter that ended Aug. 26 rose to $188 million, or 64 cents a share, from $158.9 million, or 55 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 5.7 percent, to $1.77 billion from $1.67 billion, the company said. Interest expense dropped 11 percent in the quarter as interest rates fell, Chief Financial Officer James Lawrence said.

MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios and Wheaties, passed Kellogg Co. for the first time as the largest U.S. cereal maker based on revenue.General Mills held 32.5 percent of the U.S. market based on dollars spent for the 12-week period that ended Dec. 6, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Nomi Ghez, citing sales data collected by Information Resources Inc. That beats the 31.6 percent share notched by Kellogg.General Mills is succeeding by developing variations of its best-known brands such as Chex and new products including Cinnamon Toast Crunch that aren't readily copied by makers of discount and generic cereals.

MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills Inc., the maker of Cheerios and Wheaties, passed Kellogg Co. for the first time as the largest U.S. cereal maker based on revenue.General Mills held 32.5 percent of the U.S. market based on dollars spent for the 12-week period that ended Dec. 6, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Nomi Ghez, citing sales data collected by Information Resources Inc. That beats the 31.6 percent share notched by Kellogg.General Mills is succeeding by developing variations of its best-known brands such as Chex and new products including Cinnamon Toast Crunch that aren't readily copied by makers of discount and generic cereals.