ARCHIVES :: OCTOBER 2001 :: NOTEBOOK

A Burger
For Breakfast Is
Good for Sales

Fast-food restaurants are going after a new breed of customer: the breakfast burger eater. 

The group includes people who work unusual hours, such as night-shift factory workers, and may crave dinner-type fare when their workday ends in the morning. “If I really need to get through the day I eat a burger for breakfast,” says Seth Kligerman, a 26-year-old medical student, as he downs his second double cheeseburger at Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern one recent morning. In Mr. Kligerman’s line of work, meals—like work hours—can be erratic. “You’re never guaranteed a meal when you work at a hospital,” he says.

In Chicago, 275 Burger Kings now offer burgers for breakfast, rather than waiting until 10:30 a.m., when the menu typically is switched over to lunch fare. Results have been impressive: Breakfast sales at those restaurants have increased 4% to 7% since they started offering early-morning burgers in 1997. And with a new radio and print-advertising push behind them, burgers now make up 35% to 40% of all morning sales.

A Burger King spokesman wouldn’t comment on whether the concept is likely to go national, except to say that headquarters staff in Miami is watching the experiment and finds it encouraging.

Burger King could use a breakfast boost to help it compete against McDonald’s, the leader in fast-food breakfast. The average McDonald’s sells $1.7 million of food each year, 24% of that at breakfast. The average Burger King restaurant sells $1.1 million of food yearly, with just 13% to 14% at breakfast.

McDonald’s occasionally serves burgers for breakfast at a small number of restaurants near heavily industrial areas; otherwise, they aren’t available until between 10:30 and 11 a.m. Walt Riker, a spokesman for the chain, says it has no plans to add burgers to the breakfast menu nationwide since the current menu is already successful. “We do a monster business on breakfast,” Mr. Riker says.

Some customers at Chicago Burger Kings are hoping that breakfast burgers are here to stay. “I am pumping all day and sweating—I need a hearty meal,” says 25-year-old Kevin Kerr, a construction worker who, on his way to work one recent morning, ordered a junior Whopper and a filet of fish, another lunch item now available for breakfast.

Other customers are buying burgers just to add variety. “I just get sick of doughnuts and stuff,” says Matt O’Brien, an emergency medical technician who ordered a Whopper Extreme, loaded with bacon, around 9 a.m. recently—three hours into his shift.

 —Devon Spurgeon