Have you ever had the urge to bring up a totally random topic around a group of co-workers to gauge their reaction but then didn’t because you were afraid (a) they just wouldn’t understand or (b) you’d come off as a stoner whose mind is really off wondering what a double rainbow looks like in person?
I had one of those urges last week….
Here’s the situation: We opened a bag of Traditional Chex Mix during an office party. A group of us were rummaging through eating our favorite pieces. After digging for about 3 minutes I mumbled: “Naturally, there are only a couple rye chips.” I had this reaction because it’s my favorite thing in the bag and out of all the bags I have ever opened in my life there have always been fewer than 7 ½ bagel chips (we all know the feeling when you find a rye chip and it ends up being a broken piece; huge let down.). Yep I said it out loud. There was no turning back….
From there I got pretty vocal about the need for more rye chips and to my surprise I wasn’t alone in this feeling. Then there were others that joined the conversation and thought the complete opposite. Seriously? Whose favorite piece is the breadstick?! C’mon people… It’s just a fancy cracker! Either way, my mind was blown. Other people have actually thought about this.
I did what any professional in social media would do and turned to Google to get to the bottom of the rye chip dilemma. While I didn’t find answers like “rye chips cost more to make” or “research states consumers want more pretzels in Chex Mix,” I did learn that General Mills had acquired the Chex product line back in 1996. My first reaction was thinking that maybe they didn’t want to change something that had worked for years… With this in mind, it made me wonder, have they ever reached out to customers to see what they thought about the ingredient ratio in a bag of Chex Mix? I mean in 1996 the Internet wasn’t much to write home about and focus groups were costly and rarely scalable, so something as monumental as this could have been pushed aside. Given what we have at our fingertips today with social media we figured we’d run a little focus group of our own….
Below are the pieces that make up a bag of Traditional Chex Mix. We want to know which piece is your favorite. Everyone has eaten Chex Mix at one point or another so let’s hear it and ask everyone else you know. We need to let General Mills know what’s up, because this limited rye chip/ two pretzel game has got to change… or maybe it doesn’t? TAKE OUR POLL and we’ll let the data decide.
In a Traditional Chex Mix bag, which piece is your favorite?
0%0%0%0%0%0%
Fun Fact: While “Chex Party Mix” recipes appeared on boxes of Chex cereal as early as 1952, it wasn’t until 1985 that pre-packaged Chex Mix was actually available.
Connect with Scott Ludwig on LinkedIn or on Twitter @bostonrs.