Battle for your breakfast
At home, out, on the go, suddenly everybody wants to feed you in the a.m. And why not? It's a $78 billion market.
What seemed like the makings of a breakfast comeback two years ago suddenly has the look of a full-fledged "breakfast war," as supermarkets, cereal-makers and the restaurant industry go fork to spoon for a share of the burgeoning $78 billion breakfast market.
No punches are being pulled: McDonald's is cashing in on the high-end coffee craze; Starbucks is going after McDonald's meat and potatoes - offering its own gussied-up McMuffin.
The supermarket checkout counter is yet another front, with a continuing stream of new products for the health-conscious, like high-fiber cereals and waffles reconfigured with whole wheat, as well as offerings for those pressed for time, like the microwaveable Jimmy Dean "Breakfast Bowls" - scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes and cheese - ready in three minutes.
Surveys by the Mintel Group report sales of at-home breakfast foods reaching $29.6 billion this year, with a predicted increase to $31.2 billion by 2011, with new items aimed at satisfying consumer desire for more healthful, all-natural and organic foods as well as not-so-healthful convenience items.
"What's driving it is the phenomenal success McDonald's enjoyed with breakfast items and their ability to offer hot foods so conveniently," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic Information Services, a research firm that tracks the food-service industry.
"There are more and better options than people had in the past. Now even Starbucks is serving a hot breakfast," with its own riff on the McMuffin: Eggs Florentine, with baby spinach and havarti cheese on an English muffin for $2.99.
Where chains once strove for more locations, the goal now, Paul says, is to increase sales at each store.
And the fast-food choices keep increasing. Just in the last year or so, Burger King added a 10-item breakfast "value menu" featuring the Hamlette (ham-egg-cheese) sandwich on a sesame seed bun and Cheese Tots.
Even Subway came on board, adding hot omelet-style subs as breakfast sandwiches. Dunkin' Donuts tested the breakfast market with a maple cheddar sandwich in January, while Panera offered egg-cheese-bacon paninis.
With so many fast-food options, particularly breakfast sandwiches and other "dashboard" or handheld foods, more consumers are outsourcing their morning food preparation.
Mintel surveys show Americans age 18 and older eating breakfast out an average of seven times a month. And breakfast foods aren't just for breakfast anymore.
There is more talk about making breakfast foods all-day fare, as both chains and independent restaurants scramble to get a share of the breakfast pie. Make that quiche. Last year, NPD, a global market research firm, reported that 44 percent of breakfast foods at family-style chains were not served in the morning.
Traditional items continue to dominate in-home breakfast menus, most often (in order) coffee, cold cereal, fruit juice, milk, bread, fruit, eggs, hot cereal, bacon and hot tea.
But alternatives such as cereal bars, yogurt and carbonated soft drinks, a popular breakfast beverage among teens and young adults, are on the rise. Consumers eating breakfast outside the home order soda with more than 15 percent of those meals, up from 8 percent in 1990.
Eggs are back. After years in the penalty box, they are now part of more breakfasts, on 12 percent of menus last year, up from 10 percent a decade earlier.
Paul estimates that 15 to 18 percent of breakfasts are currently being sourced from restaurants (compared with about 25 percent of dinners), with McDonald's, the largest restaurant chain, in the lead, feeding 27 million Americans daily.
Mickey D's made breakfast-on-the-go appealing when it put the Egg McMuffin out there in 1975. Now the chain's morning menu includes more than 20 breakfast sandwich and meal options, including a 1,280-calorie deluxe breakfast and sausage-egg-and-cheese McGriddles (560 calories, 32 grams of fat) that make the basic 300-calorie McMuffin (with 12 grams of fat) look like diet fare.
On the downside, among survey subjects, only 38 percent think of breakfast as a full meal. For 45 percent, it is deemed a mini-meal; for 5 percent, a snack; and for 11 percent, a beverage-only occasion.
The problem for Americans will be in avoiding the worst high-calorie, high-fat choices, such as Starbucks' Venti Caffè Mocha with whipped cream, a beverage the Center for Science in the Public Interest rates among "10 foods you should NEVER eat." They call it a Quarter Pounder With Cheese in a cup - 490 calories and 16 grams of bad fat.
