For students who wake up early enough, eating breakfast while watching television is part of the morning routine. But eating breakfast while on television is another story.
Yesterday morning, CBS's The Early Show taped a feature story about Cereality -- the local eatery featuring only cereal. The clip is part of The Early Show's series "Study Hall" that investigates what students are up to in the education world.
"We're doing a lifestyle story [about] the trend of college students eating cereal," CBS News correspondent Melinda Murphy said of the segment, which will air on Feb. 10.
Weeks earlier, CBS asked Cereality co-founder and chief executive officer David Roth to round up loyal college-age Cereality patrons for interviews.
Roth chose four Nursing juniors -- Kelley Martin, Bess Staebler, Stephanie Buswell and Juliet Marx.
The students meet together at Cereality every Wednesday morning.
Roth chose them for the story because CBS wanted to "talk to people here who are living and breathing and talking cereal," Roth said.
"We're going to shoot you doing your thing on Wednesday morning," show producer Andy Merlis said to the students in the pre-taping setup. "Don't look at the camera, that's all I ask."
Meanwhile, Murphy dodged the camera's line of sight. The goal was to make the scene look like a typical morning at Cereality.
"Half of my job is trying to figure out where to hide from the camera," Murphy said.
In addition to interviewing the four Nursing students, Murphy also approached two students who happened to be trying Cereality for the first time that morning
"Is it weird to go to a restaurant to eat cereal?" asked Murphy.
"Yeah," third-year School of Medicine graduate student Caren Kim said. But she agreed that it was fun, too.
"You're graduate students and you're still eating cereal!" Murphy said.
As part of the story, Murphy also spoke with a nutritionist to investigate the health value of sugared cereals.
"They're not as bad as you might think," Murphy said, because a full cereal breakfast includes fruit, milk and grains.
Martin thought that eating breakfast while on television was "fun" and "different."
Later that day, Murphy interviewed the four students in their apartment. She wanted an authentic glimpse into the trends of college life for "Study Hall."
Although Murphy requested to talk only to college-age patrons of Cereality, Roth said that Cereality is not only for students; he has many patrons between the ages of 30 and 40.
He's even had three professionals drive to Cereality from their office in New Jersey during their lunch break.
"Just like 12 year-olds, they were as happy as can be ... they asked me to take a picture of them" as proof that they ate lunch there, Roth said.
