Energy dispersive‐X‐ray fluorescence (ED‐XRF) is a well spread near‐line analytical technique, suitable for easy and rapid measurement of major elements and/or trace elements especially in many different food matrices. This study demonstrates the fitness for purpose of this method to ensure the correct addition of minerals during breakfast cereal production. Indeed, variations in process and in raw material compositions may lead to values out of legal tolerance, and thus quality controls need to be regularly performed to meet the release compliance criteria. Using such analytical technique close to production lines can allow controls that are more systematic as well as avoiding the shipment of numerous samples for reference method analyses often done to external laboratories. Thus, ED‐XRF allows to ensure finished products compliance with product declarations. A commercial ED‐XRF device was used during this study. Within 7 min of analytical time for two replicates/sample, the developed method gave accurate results for the quantification of Na, Mg, Ca, Fe, and Zn in breakfast cereals without any proportional biases between ED‐XRF and reference method (inductively coupled plasma‐atomic emission spectrometry) results.