You're at a Red Lobster.  A kid at the next table (Izod shirt, Eddie Bauer jacket) plays with his posable C3PO) and tells you he had Cheerios and Yoplait for breakfast, will play Frogger alone later, can't get anyone to play Monopoly.  The punch line is that the General is behind it all.

He was the first consumer food company to diversify and while the first step was small (Play-doh is 96% flour), the General goes for market share and is now the world's biggest toymaker.  He took Red Lobster from five units to biggest dinner chain.

Invented white bread, he did, or nearly--in 1866 built a mill in Minneapolis, betting spring wheat (which ground gray) was marketable.  Steel rollers, a purifier, and presto:  white, and a better baker.  Became world's biggest miller.

Enriched flour.  Brown 'n' serve rolls.  The singing commercial.  Biscuit mix (leading to all the mixes; a sales exec stumbled on that one).  Fortified cereals.

General Mills proclaims a "freedom to fail."  Brewster Atwater, CEO, tells securities analysts his firm flops fairly often because "we try more new things than most companies."

A world trader for a century (at the first Miller's International Exposition in 1880 it was a clean sweep--gold, silver and bronze; thus Gold Medal), General Mills has snack companies all over western Europe.  Led Robster is open in Tokyo and Bugles are about to hit Korea.

The Gorton's fisherman may be from Gloucester and Jabba from a galaxy far away, but there's a Minnesota connection.