Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Greg Michaelson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Greg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

When my partner Andrew and I were kids, our moms would never buy the good cereal. We would always end up with the cheap, bagged, generic cheerios and we hated it, but both of our moms would let up pour sugar and honey on the cereal. There’s nothing quite as reminiscent of childhood as the last slurp of cereal milk with undissolved sugar in the bottom. Cerup is syrup for cereal that we invented! The first even cereal topping formulated specifically to make your cereal delicious!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Breakfast is often considered the most important meal of the day, yet it can also be the most mundane. As kids, Andrew and I would always beg our moms to buy the cereal we wanted, but we were often met with disappointment. We ended up pouring sugar or honey on top of our plain cereal just to make it taste better. Even now, the thought of that last bite of sweet, sugary cereal brings back fond memories. But why should the fun stop there? Shouldn’t there be more options available to personalize and make breakfast more exciting?

When you think about it, despite the plethora of cereal brands available, there are really only two types of cereal: plain and sugary. If you want a healthy breakfast, you’re limited to plain cereal options. And if you want a fun and tasty breakfast, you’re limited to sweet, sugary cereals.

This is where Cerup comes in. We created a cereal topping that allows you to control the amount of sugar in your cereal, and to choose a flavor that fits your personality and mood for the day.

With Cerup, the possibilities are endless. You can drizzle it over your favorite cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles and more. You can choose from a variety of flavors such as marshmallow Cheerios or blueberry Raisin Bran, the choice is yours.

The founders of Cerup are Greg Michaelson and Andrew Knudsen.

Greg Michaelson and his wife Jennifer live in Elko, Nevada, and have four children, Miles, Jack, Lizzie, and Wyatt. Greg is a bit of a data nerd and has a PhD in Statistics from the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!), but his real passion is cereal! He especially loves breakfast for dinner.

Raised in Nevada, Andrew and his wife, Shannon, live in Elko with their family: Hattie, Son-in-Law Garrett, Cooper, and Tucker. Andrew is a general contractor and a truck enthusiast. They LOVE cereal and believe it’s tasty any time of day, but it’s the best midnight snack… Cerupsly!

How’d you meet your business partner?

Andrew is a general contractor who was pouring me a driveway at my house. We became friends and one day we were hanging out. He passed me a slip of paper with the word “Cerup” on it with a knowing smile. Of course, I’d never seen the word before, so I just looked at him. He explained the idea, and I was skeptical, but I shrugged. It was definitely a unique product, and at the end of the day, success is all about execution, so we set out to make it a reality. The next year we spent in R&D and we launched a little over a year after he slid that slip of paper over to me.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

We started out producing Cerup with a copacker in Mexico, which made quality control challenging. Our most popular flavor is marshmallow, and in the first production order of marshmallow from our Mexico factory we were absolutely shocked to see that the color of the marshmallow Cerup was reminiscent of a bodily fluid. This was so much the case that we knew instantly that we could never sell the product. We eventually had to scrap the whole batch and start looking for another copacker. Quality is so important. That was a costly issue!

Contact Info:

• Website: cerup.com
• Instagram: @cerupsly
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cerupsly
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/greg-michaelson
• Twitter: @cerupsly
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@cerupsly
• Other: TikTok: @cerupsly