C. W. Post
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Image:Cw post marj.jpg C. W. Post more fully Charles William Post (October 26, 1854 - May 9, 1914), was an American breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer and a pioneer in the prepared-food industry. The son of Charles Rollin Post and Caroline Cushman Lathrop (1824-1914), Post visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium operated by John Harvey Kellogg for his failing health. There, he was inspired to start his own cereal company based on the products used at the sanitarium. In 1895, he founded Postum Cereal Co., with his first product, Postum cereal beverage. He was in the vanguard in the use of print advertising, and is said to have invented the cents-off coupon. Post's first breakfast cereal premiered in 1897, Post named the Grape Nuts cereal after tasting a sample and deciding that the nuggets had a nutty flavor. In 1908, he followed up the Grape Nuts label with a brand of corn flakes product first called Elijah's Manna that was later renamed Post Toasties.
C.W. Post's business produced one of the largest fortunes of the early 20th century. He married Ella Letitia Merriweather; one of their children, Marjorie Merriweather Post, married Edward F. Hutton, and donated the land for the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, which was founded in 1954, the 100th anniversary of C. W. Post's birth.
On May 9, 1914 he committed suicide for unknown reasons after having his appendix removed at a hospital in Santa Barbara, California, leaving his twenty seven-year-old daughter as heir to a growing company.