Leverage the All-Day Breakfast Trend and Boost Sales

Breakfast continues to evolve, becoming defined more by cuisine type rather than daypart with each year. For busy consumers who may skip the morning meal or who just need an easy lunch, dinner or snack on the go, fresh, high-quality “breakfast foods” have big appeal.

Retail foodservice can leverage the all-day breakfast trend to boost sales—not just among morning shoppers, but also with consumers dropping in on their lunch break or on their way home from work at the end of the day. By employing some best practices, the grocerant can offer a stand-out breakfast menu while keeping costs and labor low.

Rising demand

According to a survey by The Harris Poll and General Mills Foodservice, the pandemic brought about an uptick in breakfast food consumption across dayparts. Almost a quarter of Americans (24%) reported eating more breakfast foods during the pandemic, and nearly 4 in 5 (79%) have eaten breakfast foods outside of the traditional daypart in the past year, with most saying they’ve enjoyed breakfast food for dinner.

The grocerant is no exception to the trend. According to Technomic’s Q4 2020 Supermarket Foodservice Consumer Marketbrief, breakfast and morning snacks accounted for 3% more of day-long sales in 2020 than in 2019. What’s more, breakfast-food shoppers are a prime demographic for retailers to focus on as they seek to expand sales across dayparts. Technomic’s Q4 2019 Supermarket Foodservice Consumer Marketbrief found that 37% of grocerant breakfast-buyers shop the supermarket foodservice section at least once daily, as opposed to 10.3% of overall shoppers.

In short, quality all-day breakfast options can be a boon to consumer retention as shopping grocerant breakfast offerings becomes a part of consumers’ daily routines. Shifting all-day operations is no small feat, however. Fortunately, some best practices can help minimize added labor and maximize profits.

Best practices

Developing a core breakfast menu with all-day appeal is key. A combination of classic offerings, such as breakfast sandwiches and burritos, alongside snackable sweet dishes, such as cinnamon rolls and waffles, is a great way to ensure there’s an option to satisfy any consumer’s craving at any time of day. To keep the menu fresh, retailers can try adding a few limited-time or seasonal options to their core menu.

Breakfast-food bundles are a great way to offer options for entertaining or even a quick weeknight meal for busy families. And take-and-bake foods, such as trays of cinnamon rolls or egg casseroles, let consumers enjoy their breakfast foods hot and fresh at home.

There are endless ways for grocery store foodservice to cash in on the all-day breakfast trend and keep sales high from morning to night. Menu innovation shouldn’t come at the cost of adding labor to the back of house, however, and quality cooking shouldn’t mean sacrificing high margins. To leverage a fresh, exciting menu without causing a slowdown in operations, time- and labor-saving solutions are a must.

The fryers are a key place to start, with fresh-fried foods bringing craveability to many favorite offerings on the breakfast menu. Fryer oil management can easily interrupt the flow of even the most efficient grocerant kitchen. Changing and disposing fryer oil is time-consuming and potentially hazardous—forcing employees to spent time doing maintenance instead of tending to food prep and customer service tasks.

With services from Restaurant Technologies, however, the burden of managing fryer oil can be a thing of the past. Restaurant Technologies’ Total Oil Management services take care of everything from ordering and delivering fresh cooking oil to storing, handling and recycling used oil. What’s more, Restaurant Technologies offers other cleanliness-boosting, time-saving services, including AutoMist automated hood and flue cleaning and Grease Lock hood filters —all of which are key to keeping a kitchen clean and efficient

To learn more about how Restaurant Technologies can help grocerants make the most of their all-day breakfast menus, visit www.rti-inc.com.