McDonald’s Corp. is erasing the biscuit-McMuffin regional line.
The Oak Brook, Ill.-based burger giant on Wednesday announced plans to expand its popular all-day breakfast menu this September.
The new menu will make both biscuit sandwiches and McMuffin sandwiches available everywhere, all day, eliminating the regionality of whether locations served one or the other.
The menu also adds McGriddle sandwiches to the all-day menu.
The expanded menu doubles down — or perhaps triples down — on the most well received move McDonald’s has made as it has worked to revitalize its business over the past couple of years.
The burger giant has had breakfast since the 1970s but switched over to lunch at 10:30 a.m. and long resisted suggestions to make Egg McMuffins and biscuits available all day.
But three years of weak sales, combined with the continued popularity of those breakfast items, can tend to change minds. And last October, the company added a limited selection of breakfast items, but with only one sandwich option: Either McMuffins or biscuits.
In general, restaurants in the Southeast served biscuits, while most of the country served McMuffins.
Customers responded. Same-store sales rose 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter last year and 5.4 percent in the first quarter of this year.
The program “exceeded the sales contribution we had projected,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call earlier this year.
The program impacted chains like Bojangles and Jack in the Box, with executives at the chains suggesting that the addition hurt their sales late last year and early this year.
McDonald’s has long been expected to expand the all-day breakfast program, especially as it comes close to the fourth quarter when the company will lap that 5.7 percent number in the U.S. The chain has been testing McGriddles as an all-day breakfast item at a number of locations throughout the country.
The addition of biscuits and McGriddles all day also gives McDonald’s the option to add more interesting products. As it is, some locations have offered chicken biscuits, and others have tested chicken McGriddles — both of which would enable the chain to add interesting new products without adding new ingredients.
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected]
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