The British breakfast boomThe British breakfast boom

As I look ahead at my calendar for tomorrow, I notice that I have another early-morning meeting at a well-known London restaurant. For me, breakfast meetings are ideal. I have always been a morning person, and at breakfast, you can comfortably meet someone for an hour — which would be almost impossible at lunch — and still be at your desk and ready for the day by 10 a.m. 

But I don’t have to cast my mind too far back to recall a time when breakfast meetings meant bacon and eggs with a pal at a roadside restaurant en route to work. At that point, my calendar was booked up with endless lunchtime appointments.

While Americans have embraced breakfast and understood its corporate importance for years, in the United Kingdom, it took a bit longer to catch on. Now, however, breakfast is well-established here as one of the prime times for meetings and to entertain clients. 

As the meal’s popularity has grown and consumer habits have changed, restaurants have had to adapt to tap into the potential early-morning income stream.  The margins on breakfast ingredients are often far greater than those for other meals — even though alcohol consumption is, at least for most diners, limited.

There were some operators that initially resisted the shift, viewing breakfast as a daypart best left to hotels or “greasy spoon” cafes and roadside eateries. These operators have had to work hard to catch up, often looking to create a point of difference to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

Even pubs, which traditionally relied on afternoon and evening trade, identified the opportunity to increase their hours of operation to help make up the revenue they have lost recently through falling beverage sales.

Much of this increase in morning trade is, however, at the expense of lunchtime activity. The U.K.’s lunch market is worth an estimated $23.9 billion, and, understandably, operators have historically relied heavily on it as one of their primary sources of income.

According to the latest research by Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group, the lunch and afternoon snacks market has dropped by 6 percent over the past two years, while breakfast sales have risen by 3 percent over the same period.

As the number of breakfast options has increased, so, too, has the exciting selection of dishes being served. We may not have reached the point where breakfast pizza is regularly on the menu, as it is across the pond, but we can now enjoy an array of options in addition to the more traditional kippers, or smoked herring; soft-boiled egg and soldiers, or strips of toast; and, of course, the full English breakfast, which features bacon, eggs, sausage and toast, among other items. 

Along with European pastries, smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, pancakes, muffins, eggs Benedict and French toast are now stalwarts on the British breakfast menu. More healthful options are also extremely popular, with fruit, yogurt, granola, porridge and cereal all regularly available.

But most notable is the increase in the range of international breakfast dishes being served in specialist restaurants, including Indian dishes such as idlis or dosas, Israeli dishes such as shakshuka, and huevos rancheros from Mexico.

So what caused this shift in consumer behavior?

The challenging economic climate appears to be an influencing factor. The lunchtime restaurant trade is a useful barometer of the economy as it is one of the first expenditures people cut back on when times get tough.

Workers no longer have the time or justification to sit and enjoy a long, leisurely lunch since their jobs are constantly under the scrutiny of penny-watching employers. At the same time, companies have reduced corporate budgets as a way to rein in unnecessary spending. While sharing a meal is a fantastic way to build business relationships, workers have had to find cheaper and more efficient ways to meet with clients face-to-face.  

Workers have also changed the way they socialize. Rather than meeting friends for a sit-down lunch, they are now more likely to grab a quick sandwich, or forego meeting altogether and eat lunch at their desks. In addition, NPD projects that quick-service restaurants will see 2-percent growth in year-over-year sales for the next three years, further compounding the challenges facing full-service restaurants.

In the coming months, as the economy hopefully improves, people and companies may start to loosen their purse strings, providing a boost to the full-service lunch business. Breakfast is, however, so well-established with the British population now that I question whether it will ever drop to its pre-recession levels. Restaurants need to continue to exploit this new and competitive daypart by differentiating their offerings from those of other operators.

As I set my alarm for the morning, it seems to me that for restaurants, breakfast, which many describe as the “most important meal of the day,” has come a long way to becoming exactly that — although I must admit that a nice Beaujolais does not really go very well with boiled eggs, as yet.

David Coffer is chairman of London-based The Coffer Group, a 40-year-old consulting firm specializing in the leisure sector and comprising Davis Coffer Lyons, Coffer Corporate Leisure, Coffer Hotels and Coffer Leisure Investment Advisory.