Creating New Menu Wins: Breakfast Innovation Success Stories

The American Egg Board recently presented and sponsored a webinar with QSR Magazine titled Creating New Menu Wins: Breakfast Innovation Success Stories.

Featuring Lindy Miller, Director of Research & Development, Burger King; Ouita Michel, Owner, of the Holly Hill Inn in Midway, KY; and Maeve Webster, Director of Research & Consulting, Datassential Research, the panelists discussed ideas to help move operators down the innovation path and drive breakfast traffic.

Following you will find our top ten discussion points from the presentation. Read the panelists responses following each statement.

1. Economic conditions have reduced foodservice traffic at lunch and dinner, but breakfast remains a robust win-win for both consumers and operators.
   
   Maeve Webster from Datassential states: If you think about what breakfast is, regardless of whether you're at chain or independent operator, breakfast is most often going to be the lowest cost daypart for a consumer. So breakfast is much easier to incorporate into your spending than, certainly, dinner or-or lunch and in many cases. But on the operator side, breakfast can offer great profit margin potential. So it's sort of a win-win daypart for everyone involved...the last study that I actually read is that, a larger percentage of consumers now than ever before are actually eating breakfast full stop. And that was one of the biggest challenges of breakfast was even-even getting many people to eat it, whether it was at home or away from home.
   
   
   
2. Chains not traditionally involved in breakfast (e.g. pizza, Mexican) are increasingly entering the breakfast daypart.
   
   Maeve Webster from Datassential mentions: I know that Domino's is currently testing, breakfast pizza in certain markets. That's a great way to enter the breakfast daypart, and offer something that is unique but also very appropriate for their menu. So, I think, that you're going to see more and more QSRs that have not necessarily been in breakfast, looking to make breakfast work for them in unique ways.
   
   
   
3. Popular items from other dayparts, such as the Philly, club, and steak sandwiches, are being reengineered for the breakfast menu.
   
   Maeve Webster from Datassential responds: Operators are increasingly looking to other dayparts, what's working in those other dayparts, what's popular in the other dayparts, and increasingly applying them to breakfast. We haven't really seen that quite as much in the past. Breakfast is sort of operated as its own, unique and insular daypart. We're seeing those boundaries now be expanded and broken down, and I think it really works operationally for operators.
   
   
   
4. Regional American cuisines are inspiring independent operators to devise new breakfast sandwiches.
   
   Chef Ouita Michel from Holly Hill Inn states: We always have this poached egg dish called an Egg Sardou, which is a traditional Louisiana dish with artichoke hearts and creamed spinach and poached eggs and hollandaise. And, we made it into a Panini and we have that at, both Wallace Station and Windy Corner. And it's been a really, really successful panini. Just changing the way the different elements are prepared and making that into a sandwich. And the other thing that we used, is the Hot Brown. That's a traditional Kentucky open-faced sandwich, which we remade into an egg sandwich and an egg sandwich panini and then an egg sandwich poor boy, both restaurants have it, but just in different breakfast sandwich categories.
   
   
5. Mexican flavors are common on QSR breakfast menus, Mediterranean is rising, and Asian is expected to begin inroads.
   
   Maeve Webster from Datassential mentions: Consumers are very familiar with Asian, things like wasabi, maybe not an entirely Asian sandwich, but sandwiches that begin to incorporate Asian ingredients. Consumers have been exposed to those ingredients in other dayparts, and I think that's probably—aside from Mexican and Mediterranean—the next, cuisine that's going to start impacting the breakfast daypart. And I think it's going to be easy to incorporate a lot of those sauces and individual ingredients into breakfast sandwiches.
   
   
   
6. Operators are finding ways to infuse "healthiness" into their menus, while remaining mindful that taste and comfort are still paramount.
   
   Chef Ouita Michel from Holly Hill Inn responds: I think where you're going to see a trend in healthy in terms of breakfast, is in using whole-grains. And, to me, that's like your basic position, at least my position is constantly tell me you know eat less processed flour, eat less processed sugar. And that's where the health march is really going to come from. I don't think that you know in terms of egg whites, we see very little demand for that in our own business. It's pretty much a whole egg demand. And then I think you have to be able to pair some of those healthier ingredients with some of the more indulgent ingredients.
   
   
   
7. Retiring Baby Boomers are requiring an increase in "sit-down" options on the QSR breakfast menu: more time equals more leisurely dining.
   
   Maeve Webster from Datassential states: You certainly have seen a shift in the senior demographic moving from absolutely the midscale and from other segmented into QSR. Well, they have more time and are not necessarily going to constantly be eating breakfast on-the-go like a commuter or somebody who is younger and doing it more like grab-and-go breakfast. So we are beginning to see more QSR offerings that are appropriate for sit-down occasions.
   
   
   
8. Consumers are looking for innovation and upscaling, even in traditional breakfast standbys.
   
   Chef Ouita Michel from Holly Hill Inn responds: In sausage one thing that we've found is, that we're taking from our fine dining restaurant, it's not just a breakfast sausage patty anymore. There's a whole range of sausage you know. Beautiful chorizo, you can go Spanish or Mediterranean and any direction like that, and there's a lot of artisan sausages being made. I think you'll see that more and more in the fast casual and in...eventually in QSR. I think those proteins will broaden out.
   
   
   
9. The hottest nutritional issue operators need to be focusing on today is sodium content in menu items.
   
   Lindy Miller from Burger King mentions: We're seeing sodium be, of course, the next big trans-fat, so Burger King has a sodium task force to address the industry needs across all of our dayparts, as well as breakfast.
   
   
   
10. Nutrition information: laws mandate it, consumers want it, and operators are providing it, but whether it affects menu composition is yet to be seen.
    
    Lindy Miller from Burger King responds: Our consumers know to go and use our Web site, www.BurgerKing.com and they can see the many different ways that they can total up their calories. And they've got those segmented, very nicely on our Web site. But it makes it very user-friendly for our consumers to use. We also have nutrition posters in all of our restaurants.