Posted on 06/07/2014 2:29:48 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Up and down the foodservice spectrum, breakfast is heating up. Here are some recent developments:
•Taco Bell introduced a breakfast menu trading on ubiquitous locations and a massive promo of the Waffle Taco. The Bell blitzed social media and took direct aim at rival McDonald’s, including an ad campaign making fun of Ronald the clown.
•McDonald’s countered with an offer for free morning cup of McCafe and started promoting its McGriddle pancake wrapped breakfast sandwich.
•Not to be forgotten, runner up, Burger King took a different approach, and announced it would serve burgers as well as breakfast fare each morning.
•Dunkin Donuts promoted a new Eggs Benedict sandwich, with Black Forest ham and “spreadable Hollandaise.”
•Starbucks introduced four new breakfast sandwiches created by its La Boulange bakery division, including a savory spinach and sun-dried tomato on ciabatta and a lower-calorie takeoff on the classic Egg McMuffin.
The Wall Street Journal reports that McDonald's "plans a marketing push to emphasize its fresh-cooked breakfasts as it battles growing competition for the morning meal." The company's CEO, Don Thompson, says that while McDonald's has not yet seen any impact from breakfast entries by competitors, the heightened competition "forces us to focus even more on being aggressive in breakfast."
It’s hard to believe that McDonald’s has not felt an impact, but CEO Thompson is a good man, running a public company where misleading statements are punished in the press and with investors, so let’s take him at his word … “not seen an impact" means demand has increased for breakfast away from home. People are time stressed and the economy has improved, so maybe more people are picking up their morning fare on the way to work.
I have always believed that pizzerias have an opportunity to sell breakfast.
Long ago, savory breakfast emerged as a category, led by breakfast burritos. The public knows Calzones so a Breakfast Calzone would work. Pizza operators have everything they need, except eggs; dough, meats, peppers, sauces, to-go packaging. Most locations have staff in the morning to prep dough for the day. Rent is paid 24/7, so why not?
I don’t think every location has the opportunity, but neither is it true that none do. Americans are on the road looking for breakfast, now is the time to leverage location and labor and dive in.
All it takes is a realistic plan that includes a stripped down menu, a little labor and a marketing plan. Survey customers; open for a short test period and give away some meals. It seems like the Breakfast Calzone can turn many pizzerias into the “Breakfast Zone.”
Foodservice operators face rising ingredient costs, higher labor and increased regulation of insurance and minimum wage, nearly impossible obstacles to overcome. What they CAN do is increase revenue to minimize the impact. Now is the time to explore The Breakfast Zone.
D-Day is over, but, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8hABGhMiPk
Panera Bread has introduced several breakfast sandwiches. My favorite is scrambled egg white, spinach, provolone, tomato, & avacado one a whole grain bagel baked flat without a hole. Mmmmmmm-good.
I’m assuming that all these new breakfast items have been cleared by Michelle.
Denny’s won the Breakfast wars years ago with their “Dagwood” breakfast sandwich, which was essentially a whole Boule bread with 3 scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon, and crumbled sausage.
How about this
Bacon-and-Egg Pizza
myrecipes May 29, 2014
Tired of cold cereal? Kick your breakfast game up a notch with an easy-as-pie pizza featuring crisp bacon, fresh eggs, and melted cheese.
Ingredients
• 4 slices bacon, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces $
• Cornmeal, for dusting
• 1 Pizza Dough, divided into 4 pieces, or
• 1 Whole-Wheat Pizza Dough, divided into 4 pieces
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil $
• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan $
• 4 large eggs
• 2 small scallions, thinly sliced
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
Preparation
1. Place oven rack on lowest shelf. If you have a stone, place it on rack. Preheat oven to 550°F, or your oven’s highest temperature, for 45 minutes.
2. Cook bacon in a skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until still soft but beginning to crisp at edges, 5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain.
3. Generously dust a 14-inch-wide pizza peel with cornmeal. Flatten a dough ball on top. Using lightly floured fingers or a floured rolling pin, stretch dough into a 6- to 7-inch round. (Make sure crust slides around easily on peel. Add more cornmeal under pizza if necessary. ) Brush 1 tsp. oil over crust.
4. Sprinkle 1 Tbsp. mozzarella, then a quarter of bacon, another 1 Tbsp. mozzarella and 1½ tsp. Parmesan over crust. Gently crack an egg over center of pizza.
5. Carefully slide pizza onto stone, using a spatula to ease pizza onto stone without spilling egg. Bake until crust is slightly charred on top and golden on bottom (lift an edge to check), cheese has melted and egg white is cooked but yolk is still jiggly, about 6 1/2 minutes. While pizza is cooking, make 3 more using remaining ingredients. Bake remaining pizzas. Using peel, transfer pizzas to individual plates. Sprinkle with scallions and pepper, then serve immediately.
All You
I love Denny’s but my wife hates them. Seems that just about everyone I go to has a waittres with some of her front teeth missing. It got to be so ommon we thought it was a job requirement...:c)
Make mine a breakfast tequito (egg, bacon, cheese with picante sauce) from What-A-burger.....yum! When I was still working in Houston I got one on the way to work every day there in Tomball. Now, I get one once a week since the closest W-A-B to my home is 7 miles.
/johnny
I think I'm gonna hurl. Who in their right mind wants to eat a sandwich in the car on the way to work that is dripping syrup (at least that's in the ads I've seen)? Really?
People are time stressed
Yes
and the economy has improved
No
Panera has done a good job with those high-nutrition breakfast sandwiches. I substitute rye bread for the bagel.
Waffle House shout out.
Perkins used to have a breakfast pizza that was delicious and HUGE! Of course it didn't taste like pizza. The crust was a thin biscuit, but the size of the plate, covered with sausage gravy, with scrambled eggs, cheese, and veggies on top.
I had to try the Taco Bell breakfast, and I thought it was really awful.
IMHO, Hardees (Carls Jr) has the best fast food breakfast out there.
Mark
Mark
Hmmm.
I also like sunny-side up eggs, sausage and jalapeno sprinkled hash browns at Waffle House.
The fast fooderies are just trying to get ahead of the public anger that will rise up...once these companies are required to pay their peons $15 an hour.
When that happens, I don’t care if they’re offering SOS, served at white linen cloth covered tables, on bone China with gold-plated tableware...I’m outta there.
I don’t know if they still have the quiche. I had the opportunity to visit Panera’s twice for breakfast in May when I tried the sandwiches. They were fabulous!
Normally I don’t get to Panera’s until supper time because they are a little far from my house and not on the way to any place I’m heading in the morning.
As a consequence, I’ve never tried their quiche as it is always sold out by the time I get there.
Best margins for the restaurant and best bargain for the consumer. Grandpa (who used to travel in his business) always told me that, and I find it still to be true.
I’ll never forget the time we got stranded on Vancouver Island (in victoria) when we missed the last ferry. We had our 4 children with us and not much money because we hadn’t planned to spend the night. This was in 1970 before we even had credit cards — just a few traveler’s checks.
There was no room at the inn near the ferry dock, so my husband drove us right up to the door of the empress hotel in Victoria — the most expensive lodgings on the island. They had no room either, but they referred us to a hotel in the city center where they found us 3 adjoining rooms that were affordable. Problem was that there was no food service in that hotel. By now it was Sunday, and many places in Canada were closed on sunday at that time.
So, for breakfast we went back to the empress where we all ordered a hearty bacon/eggs/toast breakfast except for one child who would not eat eaggs. She ordered “cereal and fruuuit”. The fruit turned out to be a bowl of the biggest blueberries I have ever seen — the size of marbles. The waitress caught my husband sneaking a blueberry out of our daughter’s dish and bustled over, “Sir, would you like some blueberries for yourself?” “Yes,” he answered, and she brought over another bowl just for him — gratis.
The bill for the 6 breakfasts was $6. Seriously.
I’ll never forget it. And, I’ll never forget The Empress. We’ve been back several times.
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