The Post saga is a linchpin story in American culinary history. Post failed again and again in business, but somehow scratched together enough money time and again to launch a new enterprise.

His restless, inventive mind jumped from innovation to innovation in fields far apart -- agricultural implements, men's clothing, residential real estate development, pianos, and finally, breakfast food.

C.W. Post hadn't spent his early career as a traveling salesman for nothing. He had a heartfelt manner that could get to the nub of what his customers wanted. In the case of the housewives who bought food, he zeroed in on their hidden desires for security, domestic harmony, ease of food preparation, and personal beauty. For the first several years of his juggernaut of a breakfast food company, he wrote all the ad copy.

C.W. innovated a grain-based coffee substitute, Postum, suspiciously similar to what was served at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he had worked off his own medical bills by helping in the experimental kitchen. Postum, the coffee-replacement Post innovated, provided a hot beverage without the side effects of caffeine, which Post thoroughly villainized. He wrote advertisements that strongly suggested coffee was responsible for weakness, jangled nerves, and premature aging. Postum saved health and marriages.

The claims made for Grape Nuts were even more extravagant. The breakfast cereal could cure a hodge-podge of diseases, including malaria and appendicitis.

Post's secret ingredient for success turned out to be a genius for marketing, including retail promotions (driving traffic to grocery stores with free samples and Postum demos), and wholesale financing deals. Above all, he leveraged print advertising as it had never been leveraged before. And he became one of the richest men in America.

At the turn of the 20th century in the Progressive era, the U.S.A. was a newly rich, melting-pot country with an exponentially growing immigrant population. An industrial society was displacing an agrarian one. Social classes were becoming more fluid. Women's roles were changing. New discoveries about germs and health grabbed people's attention.

Post seized this unsettled economic moment. Food in colorful boxes accompanied by thrilling health claims and suggestive ad copy changed the American breakfast landscape to one of packaged cereals that dominated for 100 years.

A fierce competitor, Post went head-to-head with another eccentric food marketer, Will Keith Kellogg. Kellogg suspected Post of stealing the proprietary recipes of the Battle Creek Sanitarium (Kellogg had good reason.) The two men apparently learned to hate one another.  

Post was on the leading edge and leveraged his competitive lead into one of the greatest fortunes in America.  He could not innovate away his mental and physical pain, sadly, and he killed himself at the height of his powers.

His daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post and E.F. Hutton, the second of her four husbands, Postum Cereals made a series of corporate acquisitions that included Jell-O, Minute Tapioca, Maxwell House Coffee, and Birdseye frozen foods. Eventually, the corporate name was changed to General Foods.