Will Keith Kellogg

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Will Keith Kellogg, usually referred to as W. K. Kellogg, (April 7, 1860 – October 6, 1951) was a U.S. industrialist in food manufacturing.

W.K. Kellogg started out selling brooms as a young businessman then moved to Battle Creek, Michigan to help his brother John Harvey Kellogg run the Battle Creek Sanitarium. There in one of the labs they produced the first flaked cereal. W.K. Kellogg saw this as a great business opportunity and wanted to keep the production of the product a secret, John Harvey disagreed and allowed anyone in the sanitarium to come see the flaking process. This allowed a fellow sanitarium guest, C. W. Post to see the process, thus inspiring him to start his own company, which became Post Cereals and later General Foods. C.W. Post then made his first million dollars off the sales of his new product; this upset W.K. Kellogg who then left the sanitarium to create his own company.

With his brother John Harvey Kellogg, he propagated eating cereals as healthy breakfast food, especially corn flakes. They started the Sanitas Food Company to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897. A standard breakfast then was eggs and meat eaten by the well off. The poor ate porridge, farina, gruel, and other boiled grains. John and Will eventually argued over the addition of sugar to the cereals. In 1906 he founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company which later became Kellogg Company. In 1930 Kellogg established the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. W.K. Kellogg saw the value of investing in a community. One of his more famous lines is "I will invest my money in people".

W.K. Kellogg was one of the first people to put nutrition labels on his foods. He also offered the first premium for kids to send in for.

During the depression, W.K. Kellogg extended his cereal plant to include 3 shifts, each lasting 6 hours. This gave more people in Battle Creek the opportunity to work during that time.

W. K. Kellogg is recognized as the founder of Kellogg College, Oxford. His winter ranch in Pomona, California was given to the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo at the end of World War II and is now the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Some of his property near Battle Creek, Michigan was donated to Michigan State College and is now the Kellogg Biological Station.