The complaint against Post Consumer Brands accuses Walmart of making the Broadus Foods products difficult to find and boosting each cereal box’s price to more than $10.
Snoop Dogg and Master P have filed a lawsuit accusing a cereal conglomerate of sabotaging their product sales and attempts to diversify the cereal industry.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the complaint filed against Post Consumer Brands on Tuesday also claims that Walmart, the largest retailer of Post products, ceased stocking Snoop Cereal items after they were introduced to great success at locations nationwide in July.
The suit also accuses Walmart of making the Broadus Foods products difficult to find — including concealing the cereals in a stockroom, putting them in the clearance or baby aisles — and boosting each box’s price to more than $10.
“The actions by Post Foods and Walmart demonstrate cynical disregard and exploitation of minority entrepreneurs in the business world,” said Broadus Foods’ attorney Ben Crump. “If this is how celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Master P are treated by corporate America, just imagine how lesser-known Black entrepreneurs and small-business owners are treated by powerful corporations.”
The lawsuit claims Post initially wanted to purchase the cereal rights, but the artists turned them down, stating that “selling the brand would destroy the whole purpose of leaving the company to their families as a legacy.”
Instead, Broadus Foods struck an agreement with Post, which is well-known for breakfast items like Honey Bunches of Oats, to get Snoop Cereal products — Frosted Drizzlerz, Cinnamon Toasteez, and Fruity Hoopz with Marshmallows — on grocery store shelves.
The collaboration and marketing agreement reportedly required Post to share the cereals’ revenues with Broadus Foods and handle Snoop Cereal as a separate brand, manufacturing and distributing its goods to big outlets, including Walmart, Target, Kroger and Amazon.
However, the rappers claim that Post did not intend to keep up its half of the agreement. Instead, according to the complaint, Post “ensured that Snoop Cereal would not be available to consumers or that it would incur exorbitant costs that would eliminate any profit to Broadus Foods.”
According to the lawsuit, Post and Walmart have attempted to make Broadus Foods liable for ambiguous costs incurred due to the items’ failure to sell.
Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and Percy “Master P” Percy Miller Sr. reportedly launched Broadus Foods in 2022, intending to establish a family-owned company to serve as “an example to minority entrepreneurs and business owners that they too could create and sell a good product.”
The hip-hop icons asserted that one aspect of Broadus Foods’ objective is to contribute a percentage of its profits to charities that alleviate homelessness and hunger in their local areas.
Post declared it “made substantial investments in the business” and was “equally disappointed that consumer demand did not meet expectations,” according to The Times.
A Walmart spokesperson concurred, adding that the company cherishes its associations with suppliers and has a “strong history of supporting entrepreneurs.”
“Many factors affect the sales of any given product, including consumer demand, seasonality and price to name a few,” the spokesperson told The Times. “We will respond as appropriate with the court once we are served with the complaint.”
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