Three young entrepreneurs prepare to launch The Cereal Bowl, a restaurant that elevates breakfast food to new heights.
There will be no Fruit Loops for Thanksgiving - at least not at The Cereal Bowl. The start-up café, which hopes to lure in the crowds by offering more than 35 different kinds of breakfast cereal, was hoping to have its grand opening this month. Then came the hurricanes.
The Cereal Bowl was supposed to ring in the New Year ringing up sales. Instead, the upstart cafe that plans to sell almost three dozen varieties of breakfast cereal in a laid-back atmosphere has seen nearly as many obstacles make mush of its opening plans.
After years of dreaming, months of planning and weeks of construction, the entrepreneurs behind The Cereal Bowl - an upstart café that hopes to woo the masses with more than 30 varieties of breakfast cereal - decided to keep their doors shut just a few more days.
If you were to choose two types of cereal and two separate toppings from The Cereal Bowl's dozens of selections, you could create 802,791 different combinations.
In the 55 days that The Cereal Bowl has been open, the three entrepreneurs behind the venture have learned more about their market than they ever did during months of industry research and poring over plans. It's not that they didn't do their homework, but their entrepreneurial crystal ball couldn't account for things like Little Leaguers, health freaks and catering opportunities.
Commuters might not think 'coffee' when they see the swirling green sign for The Cereal Bowl café that sits tucked away in the Riviera Plaza shopping center at 1560 S. Dixie Hwy.
In the three months since The Cereal Bowl opened near the University of Miami, the upstart café that specializes in dishing out a dizzying variety of breakfast cereals has been getting the kind of press that small businesses dream about.
One of the world's fastest women has been seeing slow sales of her new brand of breakfast cereal. So when Lauryn Williams, a 22-year-old Miami native and Olympic silver medalist in track, wanted to light a fire under her new Fast Flakes, she thought The Cereal Bowl would be the perfect place to do it.
Carlos O'Brien was biking home after finishing his shift as morning manager at The Cereal Bowl when he swerved off the road to avoid oncoming traffic. When he emerged from the bushes, rattled, there was a finger-long branch stuck deep in his left arm.
It's Hurricane season and the three entrepreneurs behind the Cereal Bowl couldn't be happier. After weeks of ho-hum summer sales, traffic at their restaurant spiked last week as returning University of Miami students - some decked in 'Cane gear - started swarming the place.
Huddled at the back of The Cereal Bowl café on a slow Monday night, the three owners of the venture were paging through plans for their next big gamble. Spread out on the coffee table in front of them was a 56-page questionnaire that will become the basis of a franchise agreement.
For the past year, The Miami Herald has been following progress at The Cereal Bowl, in hopes of giving readers insight into what goes on in the life of a start-up business. Despite a rought start, The Cereal Bowl is on track to turn its first monthly profit, as The Miami Herald concludes its series.
