McDonald's to start all-day breakfast nationally on Oct. 6th

[dlevere]

By Khushbu Shah

You'll soon be able to eat all the 3:30 p.m. Egg McMuffins your heart desires.

McDonald's is officially launching an all-day breakfast menu nationwide, starting October 6th. The chain's franchisees voted today to bring the program to 14,300 locations across the country. McDonald's has been testing the program since March in cities like San Diego, Nashville, and in various locales across Mississippi.

@ConnorFranta you know that breakfast of ours? Well, it’s about to become an #AllDayBreakfast starting 10/6. k bye. pic.twitter.com/4G1DbPn6Vp— McDonald's (@McDonalds) September 1, 2015

Currently, the company does not sell popular items like the Egg McMuffin past 10:30 a.m., citing that there is not enough grill space to cook both burgers and breakfast items. Due to this, the all-day breakfast menu is simplified and limited to a number of "core items," writes the Wall Street Journal. Customers will be able to buy Egg McMuffins, biscuit sandwiches, hash browns, sausage burritos, and hot cakes beyond the 10:30. However, those hoping for a 3 p.m. McGriddle will still be out of luck.

The news comes just days after McDonalds revealed that it is now cooking its breakfast items in real butter. A number of locations have already switched to the real stuff and a full rollout will occur when McDonald's "depletes its supply of liquid margarine."

[dlevere]

McDonald's All-Day Breakfast Might Make America's Egg Shortage Worse

[bungholio]

If people would cook their own food, I think waste would be far less. How hard is it to throw something into a pan, crank the setting as high as possible, arm your smoke alarm, prepare a fire extinguisher, and when the alarm goes off to use the fire extinguisher and a hammer and chisel to get your delicious meals?

[dlevere]

McDonald's franchisees say all-day breakfast is a nightmare

By Hayley Peterson



The new menu is slowing down service, reducing average ticket costs, and causing chaos in the kitchens, franchisees told Nomura analyst Mark Kalinowski in a new survey.

"In small stores, the problems are vast with people falling over each other and equipment jammed in everywhere," one franchisee wrote in response to the survey.

Another wrote, "All-day breakfast is a non-starter. We are trading customers down from regular menu to lower-priced breakfast items. Not generating new traffic."

A third called it "erratic, distorted, disorganized direction from McDonald's," while nearly a dozen more franchisees complained that it slowed down service and added complexity to the kitchens.

"Customers are abandoning us in droves because we are either too slow, or sub-par quality," one franchisee wrote.



Others noted that the all-day breakfast menu is confusing to some customers because it varies regionally. In some states, McDonald's is offering McMuffins on the all-day menu, while in others, only biscuit sandwiches are available.

A few complained that the launch requires extra labor, which is an added cost to franchisees who are already pressed for cash by declining sales and expensive kitchen upgrades.

"Unfortunately, with the current labor pool in our area, we are struggling to have enough people to run the shift, much less add an extra person," one franchisee wrote.

Kalinowski interviewed 29 US franchisees covering about 226 restaurants for the survey. McDonald's has more than 14,000 restaurants in the US.

We reached out to McDonald's for comment and will update when we hear back.

The all-day breakfast menu launched nationally on October 6, following regional tests. It's still too early to tell whether it will be a success, but customers have been begging the chain for years to extend its breakfast hours.

The launch is part of McDonald's efforts to revive business following seven straight quarters of same-store sales declines.

In an email to franchisees, McDonald's US President Mike Andres called the all-day breakfast launch a success.

"The successful launch of All Day Breakfast proves that when we listen to and respond to our customers and align around a great execution plan, we will grow our business and take share," Andres said, according to Bloomberg.

[bungholio]

I don't know about the US side of tech support for this stuff even though US side tells me it's a lot quicker and better aside from far ruder store staff and Spanish, but I'm really getting to the point where doing the UK side support is just infuriating. Many things about the functionality of these stores strike me as being stupid. Whoever is miles above us in the engineering departments of this must be retarded or something. The amount of things we need to slowly and invasively do that constantly shut down various store functions just for the seemingly simple problem fixes are absurd. Tech support hates many things, people that work in McDonalds hate many things, and so do customers. Makes me wonder who these clowns are that come up with the systems we deal with. If you do tech support for them, work in their restaurant, or eat there, you're just killing yourself physically and emotionally. Hate the place. It seems like it's designed to be infuriating, I can't make sense of the place or even guess at the reasoning for countless things about these stores.