Hands hold up a clear bag of cereal flakes. Below a seal near the bottom, crumbs collect in a narrow compartment.

No More Crumbs

The last bowl shouldn’t be a bowl of dust.

A cereal bag with a crumb catcher in the bottom exists. It’s patented. No cereal company will make it yet. You get to change that.

Vote which cereal gets it first

Crumbs at the bottom of the bag. Love them or hate them?

Which cereal should get the crumb catcher first?

How it works

  1. Close-up of a clear bag of cereal flakes. Below a seal near the bottom, a narrow compartment holds a layer of small crumbs.

    Shake. Crumbs and sugar dust fall through slots in a seal about an inch above the bottom of the bag.

  2. Fine cereal dust and flakes resting on a horizontal seal line, with a mostly empty compartment below it and a line of crumbs along the bottom seal.

    Pour. The seal holds the crumbs back. Whole pieces only.

  3. Hands pour crumbs from the small clear crumb compartment into a ceramic bowl on a marble counter.

    Or don’t waste them. Tear the corner and pour the crumb compartment into your bowl on purpose.

How the crumb catcher is builtA bag liner seen from the front. Whole cereal pieces fill the main compartment. Near the bottom, a slotted seal of short sealed sections with open gaps between them lets crumbs fall into a small compartment closed by a continuous bottom seal.
  • Slotted seal. Sealed sections alternate with open slots. Crumbs fall through; whole pieces don’t.
  • Continuous bottom seal. Closes the crumb compartment, about an inch below the slotted seal.

Why hasn’t anyone made this?

People have been complaining about cereal dust for years — Lifehacker, WonderHowTo, and others have published “hacks” for sifting the last bowl through a strainer. The patent was granted in 2015. In 2020 the inventor took it to the three largest cereal makers and a dozen others. The conversations mostly ended in legal departments, and the answer was some version of “our customers aren’t asking for it.” That is what this site is for.

The good news is that the change is small. Packaging-equipment makers at Pack Expo described adding the crumb-catcher heat plate to existing form-fill-seal machines as relatively easy and inexpensive. Same film, same box, same line.

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