By now, you've surely seen the announcement that McDonald's is rolling out all-day breakfast throughout the nation. Since July, when Wall Street Journal reporters got their hands on a leaked internal memo, rumors have been swirling that the fast-food giant would lift the 10:30 a.m. cap on the morning meal. The all-day breakfast was tested in San Diego, which seems insane when the concept of all-day breakfast isn't exactly a novel idea anymore.
Now comes a confirmation from the source.
Beginning October 6, all McDonald's restaurants located in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe counties will offer breakfast all day.
McDonald's breakfast anytime could just be the turnaround the restaurant chain needs to revive its brand. According to McDonald's, the company received more than 120,000 tweets asking for breakfast throughout the day in the past year alone. The breakfast offer is also good news for the 45,000 employees and owners who work at the more than 830 McDonald's locations throughout Florida, who may see an increase in business.
With all of this love for McDonald's breakfast, especially the still-superior and all-around tasty Egg McMuffin, why did it take McDonald's so long to hop aboard the breakfast express? The answer, according to the Wall Street Journal, was space, with current restaurants able to handle only breakfast service or lunch and dinner service, but not both at the same time.
To serve all-day breakfast, restaurant operators needed to add equipment such as separate grills for eggs and burgers so that raw egg products would not come in contact with meat patties. Additional toasters needed to be ordered to handle lunch buns and English muffins, which require different heating temperatures.
To simplify all-day breakfast, the company is offering a limited number of core items, including sausage burritos, hotcakes and, depending upon the region, Egg McMuffins or biscuit sandwiches.
The chain also is further reducing menu items to smooth the change, after removing several sandwiches and snack wraps from the national menu early this year, and later simplifying drive-thru menu boards by posting only the top-selling items. McDonald's hasn't specified coming menu eliminations because they will vary by market.
The all-day breakfast menu includes most favorites, including the king of the breakfast sandwich, the Egg McMuffin. Some items, like the McGriddle, will not be available past morning. In addition, some lunch items, like snack wraps and certain sandwiches, might be eliminated from lunch and dinner menus, on an market-to-market basis, presumably to make room for those dozens of eggs being stocked in the kitchen. The breakfast items offered all day include:
- McMuffin sandwiches
- Egg McMuffin
- Sausage McMuffin with egg
- Sausage McMuffin
- Breakfast Platters
- Hotcakes with sausage
- Hotcakes
- Sausage burrito
- Fruit 'n' yogurt parfait
- Fruit 'n' maple oatmeal
- Hash browns
