McDonald’s breakfast all-day may be casualty
Have we eaten our last midday Egg McMuffin?
McDonald’s franchisees are urging the fast food giant not to bring back the popular all-day breakfast menu that was dropped at the beginning of the pandemic.
If the company goes along, consumers can forget about satisfying a case of the afternoon or evening munchies with a McMuffin, sausage burrito, biscuit sandwich, hash browns, McGriddle, or hotcakes.
All-day breakfast was dropped, along with a number of other specialty menu items, to streamline operations and speed drive-through ordering early in the pandemic when dining rooms were closed. Fewer items on the menu meant restaurants could serve more people through drive-through lanes more quickly and with fewer employees.
The move, originally said to be temporary, has been a boon for franchisees able to focus their teams on McDonald’s core menu of Big Macs, Quarter Pounders,
Gov. Ron DeSantis said a special session likely won’t be needed to rework the budget, despite the massive drops in revenue related to the coronavirus pandemic.
sodas, shakes, fries and the like.
“The limited menu and ease of operations are allowing our teams to focus and provide blazing fast service,” according to a letter to members of the National Owners Association, a McDonald’s franchisee advocacy group, obtained by the trade website Nation’s Restaurant News.
In South Florida, the smaller menu has reduced the average drive-through wait by 40 seconds, said Brent Upchurch, whose family’s Upchurch Management owns and operates 30 McDonald’s restaurants in Broward and Palm Beach counties. That speed has enabled the company’s restaurants to serve 15,000 more customers over the first 19 days of June, he said.
“I think the crux of the discussion is we’ve got great numbers coming out of drive-through. One of the good things about COVID, if you can say there’s a good thing, is we got rid of some complexity.”
Several items that were discontinued because of the pandemic will be returning to McDonald’s menus in July, the company told franchisees Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal. They include vanilla cones, the Bacon McDouble, chocolate chip cookies and two variations of Quarter Pounders.
But franchisees want to retain the efficiency improvements because they have spurred higher sales. Earlier in the month, the National Owners Association, representing about 80 percent of franchisees, voted in favor of dropping all-day breakfast permanently, the Journal reported.
Customers are ready for McDonald’s to expand its menu beyond the core COVID items, but the company is unlikely to bring back its full pre-COVID menu, CEO Chris Kempczinski said Tuesday during a virtual investors conference.
Upchurch said discussions are continuing between franchisees and the company over what to bring back and what to eliminate. Some items that don’t sell in large numbers might get put on a seasonal rotation, like McRibs Shamrock Shakes are.
McDonald’s expanded into breakfast back in the 1970s when it introduced its signature Egg McMuffin. For decades afterward, it cut off breakfast sales at 10:30 a.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. on weekends. A limited all-day breakfast menu debuted in October 2015 and lasted until late March, when the pandemic forced dining rooms to close.
Upchurch said he could see a future expansion of breakfast hours, but not lasting all day.
“I think there’s a need for an all-day breakfast brunch model, but I don’t see demand past 2 p.m. It won’t be 10:30 and you’re done. But is it worth it to sell four extra McMuffins and slow down the dinner customers at 4 p.m.?” and