AFTER THE BELL: How dare they kill our beloved ProNutro!

The morning grunt, the blank stare at my phone, the solitary stumble to the kitchen and the grumpy flick of the switch for the kettle.

Even once I have got going for the day, two cups of coffee safely in my tummy, a wet shower towel hung over its normal railing, I like my routine.

And I am one of those people who changes what they have for breakfast very, very seldom.

So I am in full agreement with those who are outraged, outraged I tell you, to discover that ProNutro is no more. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-breakfast cereal.

I am one of those lucky people who partially grew up on the stuff. It was one of the most recognisable textures of my childhood.

As my children moved through the whole parade of cereals we realised, in our battle to keep evil sugar as far away as possible, how useful ProNutro was.

It has, sorry had, a particular hit of protein that was hard to get without having to actually cook eggs.

I realised, as had my mother before me, that a boy with ProNutro inside him, was a much happier boy for a much longer period than anything that just gave a sugar hit.

So I really cannot understand what on Earth is going on inside the decision to discontinue, sorry, kill ProNutro

As Wendly Knowler described so well in News 24 last week, the owners of the brand, the US firm PepsiCo, believe the problem is pricing.

They claim that the process to produce ProNutro involves a large amount of water and electricity, in particular because of a “roller drum drying process”. They have not been able to replicate the effect in a cheaper way.

Seriously?

Something that we were able to do in a cost-effective way in 1962, over 60 years ago, cannot be replicated now?

Sorry, but that is very hard to swallow.

The problem is that big corporations have form with this kind of thing. And often at the back of it, there is a hint of double-dealing, or some kind of feeling that in fact they’re not being entirely honest.

This is because of the way they introduce changes without being entirely up front about it.

Before deciding to kill ProNutro, PepsiCo tried a new flavour in packaging that was incredibly similar.

No matter what they say, it seems to me they were trying to smuggle the new stuff into our households and hoping no one would notice.

Of course we would notice! We’re not stupid!

Do they not have children? Do they have no idea how important routine is?

Especially in the morning?

PepsiCo are also not the only ones to have tried that.

Back in 2018, Kellogg’s tried to do the same thing with Rice Krispies. For reasons known only to themselves, they chucked a whole lot more sugar into it, labelled it “Vanilla” and also kept the packaging changes to a complete minimum.

There was the expected spate of breakfast revolutions at tables around the country as a result. It is this kind of almost skullduggery that makes me so suspicious of how poor old ProNutro has been treated.

It does mean, though, that the market is wide open for someone to produce a good, healthy protein-rich sugar-free breakfast in cereal form.

And if it was within the bounds of human capability to do this in 1962, then, despite what PepsiCo says now, it should be possible to do it again.

It’s interesting to contrast how PepsiCo and Kellogg’s have behaved over Rice Krispies and ProNutro with another breakfast staple that has increased its sales recently.

Tiger Brands reported in July that they were able to increase their sales of Jungle Oats through Summer simply because they decided to try to “deseason” the product.

As their CEO Tjaart Kruger told The Money Show at the time, when they increased their promotional activity over summer “we were pleasantly surprised. The volume increased. People eat oats all the time and not only in winter.”

He went on to make a fascinating point; it was: “Our behaviour made it a winter product… it’s funny how if you internalise these debates, how you get to make mistakes, I think.”

I’m sure he wasn’t thinking about his competitors and their brands at the time, but I do find it an interesting comment. Corporates can get caught up in their own internal dynamics and, as a result, they make mistakes that any outsider can see.

It’s one of the reasons it’s probably a good idea to not let any one person have too much power for too long, especially when that company is making consumer products.

If you’re inside the debates for too long you just lose focus on what is really important because you listen to the wrong people.

I’m sure, in the end, that something that looks and feels very much like ProNutro will somehow, magically, appear back on the market.

And that whoever gets it into the family routine quickly will make a packet.