Snoop Dogg is taking on Walmart after he claims the grocery giant tried to “choke” out his cereal brand by hiding it in storage rooms.
The rapper, whose legal name is Calvin Broadus, and his Broadus Foods cofounder Percy “Master P” Miller, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Walmart and Post Foods, claiming the companies “sabotaged” them.
The rappers allege their cereal brand, Snoop Cereal, was “intentionally kept in the stockrooms of Walmart stores, marked with ‘no location’ coding, preventing them from being placed on the store shelves,” a statement from their lawyer, Ben Crump, who represented Tyre Nichols’ family last year, said.
They claim they approached Post Brands about a partnership, which the brand entered into, to distribute their product in major retailers, like Target and Kroger, but the deal was faulty after they declined to sell the brand entirely.
“However, Post, despite agreeing to the partnership, allegedly sabotaged the success of Snoop Cereal by preventing it from reaching consumers through deceptive practices, especially at Walmart,” Crump said in a statement.
The brand hit stores on July 15, 2023 and was “an immediate success with people scrambling to locate and purchase the cereal,” the rappers said.
Months later, customers and fans couldn’t find the brand.
Broadus and Miller said the cereal appeared “sold out” in stores, but Walmart employees found several boxes of the breakfast entrée in stockrooms that were “coded not to be put out on the store shelves,” leaving the boxes in the backrooms “for months,” the lawsuit, viewed by The Post, said.
“Essentially, because Snoop Dogg and Master refused to sell Snoop Cereal in totality, Post entered [a] false arrangement where they could choke Broadus Foods out of the market, thereby preventing Snoop Cereal from being sold or produced by any competitor,” Crump said.
The brand was started in 2022 as the one of the first high-profile black-owned cereal companies and the pair was trying to “inspire economic empowerment by adding diversity into the grocery stores industry and creating opportunities for minority-owned food products and brands,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit, filed in Minnesota, claims Walmart charged as much as $10 per box in the stores it did shelve the product to “force Broadus Foods out of the market,” according to the lawsuit.
Oftentimes, the boxes were also placed in the baby section, rather than the cereal aisle.
The musicians accused the brands of “diabolical actions” and are seeking monetary damaged from Walmart and Post Brands for breach of contract, fiduciary duty, and negligent misrepresentation.
“This underhanded dealing by Defendants cannot be accepted. If Post and Walmart are able to do this to popular businessmen such as Snoop Dogg and Master P, then they definitely will do it to the mom-and-pop and minority-owned companies who do not have the ability to defend themselves,” the lawsuit read.
The company now sells the cereal on Amazon for $5.99.
Walmart released a vague statement to Billboard, saying it “values our relationships with our suppliers, and we have 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. We will respond as appropriate with the court once we are served with the complaint.”
Post Brands has not responded to the lawsuit, but did provide The Post with a statement.
“Post Consumer Brands was excited to partner with Broadus Foods and we made substantial investments in the business,” the company said. “We were equally disappointed that consumer demand did not meet expectations.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
