William Post, one of the inventors of an iconic breakfast staple that’s become an anytime snack with $1 billion in U.S. annual sales, has died.
He was 96.
Post, known to friends as “Bill,” helped create the Pop-Tart, an idea he said most people couldn’t get their heads around at the time.
“There were so many naysayers,” Post told News Channel 3 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2021. “Some of my good friends would say, ‘I don’t know Bill.’ They would tell us it’s not such a good idea.”
Post had been plant manager at Hekman Biscuit Company, a regional baker that was part of the company that would become Keebler, when Kellogg’s came calling with the idea in 1964, his obituary said.
Post told News Channel 3 that he was used to making a single sheet of dough, like for a cracker. The challenge was adding a second layer with that delicious filling in the middle.
“To get that done, I had to break every rule in the book,” he said in a video produced by Kellanova, the current corporate name of Kellogg’s.
“Within four weeks, we had a handmade sample,” he told Fox 17 in Grand Rapids in 2022. “Within four months, we had a product that went to test market. They found out that kids really liked them.”
He said in the Kellanova video that a handmade test run of 10,000 samples of strawberry, blueberry, apple currant and brown sugar cinnamon sold out quickly locally. They scaled up to 45,000 cases of each flavor to test in Cleveland, and those sold out too.
“Those just blew off the shelves,” Post told Fox 17. “Kellogg’s ran a big-page ad: ‘Oops! We goofed! Sorry, we ran out of Pop-Tarts.’ From then on, we’ve been running ever since.”
CNBC said in October that Pop-Tarts had annual sales of about $1 billion in the United States alone.
But Post didn’t need to see the sales to know it would be a success.
He found out at home first, when he saw his kids couldn’t get enough.
“I used to bring a lot of stuff home, samples you’d run, and they’d turn up their noses, they didn’t like this or that,” he told The Associated Press in 2003. “But they used to ask me, ‘Bring those fruit scones home.’ That’s what we called them at first, internally. Fruit scones. ‘Bring some of those home, will you, Dad?’”
Pop-Tarts were unfrosted initially. The icing was added a few years later, and presented a new challenge including naysayers who worried the sweet topping would melt in toasters, making a gooey mess.
He told News Channel 3 it took him a single day to perfect the formula.
Post told News Channel 3 that his favorite flavor was one of the originals: strawberry. Also ― he eats them cold.
According to Post’s obituary, he wouldn’t claim credit for creating the morning staple.
“Bill would say, ‘I assembled an amazing team that developed Kellogg’s concept of a shelf-stable toaster pastry into a fine product that we could bring to market in the span of just four months,’” the obit states.
Post was married for 72 years to Florence Post, who died in 2020.
Jerry Seinfeld is currently working on a movie about the morning treat. Seinfeld directs, co-writes and stars in “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story,” which hits Netflix in May.
In the video for Kellanova, viewers get a brief glimpse of Post’s car.
License plate: POPTART.