Do you skip breakfast at home? More important than that, how many of the people you serve skip breakfast? Breakfast all day has been all over the food industry news. McDonald’s has been in lots of those headlines.
You probably know that McDonald’s began offering breakfast all day in October 2015. The menu is based on either Biscuit or McMuffin breakfast offerings depending on the consumer preference in local markets.
There were press reports that the new demand for breakfast items was slowing down in-store service. We got to experience it ourselves in mid-October while driving on I-81. It was going to be a 600-mile day, so we started early. About 11:45AM we stopped at a McDonald’s just off the interstate. This became my first breakfast all day purchase. We waited more than seven minutes for my food. The counter staff apologized a few times. They said the fryers were busy with lunch (i.e., fries, chicken and fish).
Recently McDonald’s reported that their financial results were favorably impacted by the addition of breakfast all day. It was their best quarter in four years. They’re aggressively promoting and adding new advertising to drive more traffic for their breakfast all day menu.
The breakfast battle is expanding on many fronts. Taco Bell, 7-Eleven, Dunkin’ Donuts and others are ramping up their breakfast menu offerings and marketing efforts.
Is breakfast all day really something new? We’ve been serving breakfast all day for many years.
OPPORTUNITY: We’ve got to push much harder on merchandising and promoting our breakfast menu. Whatever we’re doing, it’s not enough. We need to more. We need to do it better. We need to do it far more frequently.
How do you communicate with your shoppers? There are lots of options: on-site signage; email; Twitter; beacon alerts; etc. Are you communicating effectively with appealing messages to drive purchases?
Put your best thinking into driving profitable growth with breakfast all day.
It all comes down to selling more stuff.
