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Morning Glory
The flailing fast food industry has an unlikely savior: breakfast sandwiches.
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Reinvention is never easy, but for McDonald’s and its burger- and taco-slinging peers, it’s become essential. And the Golden Arches are creaking under the pressure.
With consumers ditching fast food for fresher, healthier-seeming options, McDonald’s has tried to woo them back by phasing out some antibiotics from its meat, giving Ronald McDonald a makeover, arguing (using science!) that the McRib isn’t gross, and calling one of its chicken sandwiches “artisan.” It’s asked customers to “pay with lovin’ ” instead of dollars, and, in what can only be interpreted as an awkward pitch to millennials, last week even recast the Hamburglar as a stubble-faced rake in skinny jeans. Still, global sales keep sliding, now for 11 months straight. More than ever before, McDonald’s and the larger fast food sector need a savior.
Already, though, a source of partial salvation is emerging. And it happens to be the one thing fast food doesn’t need to rebrand: breakfast sandwiches.
Dunkin’ Donuts executives are touting their breakfast innovations on earnings calls, while Taco Bell has volleyed biscuit tacos and morning wraps at the masses. When Starbucks reported its second-quarter earnings in late April, executives pointed excitedly to a 35 percent increase in breakfast sandwich sales since the same period in 2014, led by a demand for new selections like a spinach and feta wrap and a reduced-fat turkey bacon, egg, and cheese. For McDonald’s, the standard-bearer of its industry and now the epitome of its woes, breakfast has remained a lone bright spot. The Big Mac may have fallen out of favor, but the Egg McMuffin is as beloved as ever.
[center]
[/center]
Reinvention is never easy, but for McDonald’s and its burger- and taco-slinging peers, it’s become essential. And the Golden Arches are creaking under the pressure.
With consumers ditching fast food for fresher, healthier-seeming options, McDonald’s has tried to woo them back by phasing out some antibiotics from its meat, giving Ronald McDonald a makeover, arguing (using science!) that the McRib isn’t gross, and calling one of its chicken sandwiches “artisan.” It’s asked customers to “pay with lovin’ ” instead of dollars, and, in what can only be interpreted as an awkward pitch to millennials, last week even recast the Hamburglar as a stubble-faced rake in skinny jeans. Still, global sales keep sliding, now for 11 months straight. More than ever before, McDonald’s and the larger fast food sector need a savior.
Already, though, a source of partial salvation is emerging. And it happens to be the one thing fast food doesn’t need to rebrand: breakfast sandwiches.
Dunkin’ Donuts executives are touting their breakfast innovations on earnings calls, while Taco Bell has volleyed biscuit tacos and morning wraps at the masses. When Starbucks reported its second-quarter earnings in late April, executives pointed excitedly to a 35 percent increase in breakfast sandwich sales since the same period in 2014, led by a demand for new selections like a spinach and feta wrap and a reduced-fat turkey bacon, egg, and cheese. For McDonald’s, the standard-bearer of its industry and now the epitome of its woes, breakfast has remained a lone bright spot. The Big Mac may have fallen out of favor, but the Egg McMuffin is as beloved as ever.
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