Wendy’s doesn’t think that the breakfast wars should be between McDonald’s and Burger King alone. They no longer want to sit on the side and let these other companies rake in extra profits. Instead, they’ve decided that they would like a piece of the pie and are now putting out a few breakfast items in a few stores to see exactly the kind of demand they would have.
It’s been 33 years since Wendy’s last sold breakfast. Only recently have they released their new menu to about 300 restaurants, but now they expect to be expanding it to all of their 5,810 establishments all over the country. Some of the items include the Breakfast Baconator, Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit, and even the Frosty-ccino, as well as the main breakfast staples of coffee.
In order to roll out the new breakfast menu, Wendy’s has to hire an additional 20,000 employees over the next few months to help work the breakfast shift. This breakfast expansion is set to take place in 2020. The last time they made this move was in 1985. There breakfast menu only lasted nine months before the company decided to pull it as McDonald’s took over the scene. The company says this time will be completely different.
“Launching breakfast into our U.S. restaurants nationwide provides incredible growth opportunities,” Wendy’s President and Chief Executive Officer Todd Penegor said in a statement. He added: “We are well-positioned to pursue it. We believe we have the right team and structure in place, and we put Wendy’s fan favorites on our breakfast menu to set us apart from the competition.”
Breakfast Competition is Heating Up
As more Americans are eating breakfast at a fast food place than ever, many of these fast food companies are looking to make a dent by offering options to meet the demand. Burger King and White Castle have up their breakfast game in recent years. Taco Bell has even jumped into the mix by offering a breakfast CrunchWrap and other breakfast taco/burrito items.
Breakfast was so popular that McDonald started offering an all-day breakfast menu, but has recently decided to start scaling it back. Offering an all-day breakfast menu is difficult on the workers and not too many people want breakfast items in the middle of the day. Still, NPD Group, a market research team, has staid that morning breakfast traffic across the country is growing.
More Americans are looking for cheap and quick meal on their way to work. They released the data that shows less people are eating breakfast at home. “In-home breakfast declined eight meals per capita between 2015 and 2018 and foodservice gained two breakfast meals per capita during the period,” the report noted.
When these plans to release more information about their updated breakfast menu on October 11 during a board meeting with investors. Here’s to hoping that their breakfast expansion last longer than nine months, especially considering that more people are looking for fast food breakfast options than ever before.
