Stick a fork in it — the Betty Crocker catalog is done. After nearly 44 years, the longtime subsidiary of Minneapolis-based General Mills will print its final catalog edition this fall; the book’s companion Website, launched in 1997, will go dark shortly after that.
The company will also discontinue its Betty Crocker points program. The 75-year-old brand loyalty program encouraged customers to clip coupons and certificates from the packaging of major General Mills products, and then redeem them for discounts on merchandise. According to company spokesperson Pam Becker, interest in the Betty Crocker catalog and the corresponding points program had grown stale in recent years.
“This was a hard decision for us,” Becker says. “It’s not an easy thing to walk away from something that is very meaningful to a large number of customers.” But the numbers for both the catalog and the points program have tailed off enough that changes needed to be made. “We made the decision to go in a different direction just a few months ago,” she adds.
Founded in 1962, the Betty Crocker catalog was published four to six times a year, selling such items as cake pans, muffin tins, utensils, and various baking accessories. The Website sells the full line of catalog products. Since the points program is folding, any General Mills’ customers still holding coupons should move quickly to redeem any remaining points, Becker advises. “We don’t in fact know when we will run out of merchandise,” she notes. “But the earlier those holding coupons act…the better.”