Skip to footer

Breakfast makes a comeback

Call 2013 the year of bacon, eggs, and pancakes: a new survey shows breakfast drove customer traffic in restaurants.

|
The Runaway Spoon
These savory little biscuits are so versatile. Enjoy them for breakfast, serve them next to a bowl of soup for lunch, or offer them as a finger food party snack. New research shows that breakfast had its best year in restaurants yet.

Breakfast was the bright spot for restaurants in 2013, according to new data from The NPD Group.

Customer traffic declined 1% at both lunch and dinner last year, but breakfast saw a 3% increase in customers. Then PM Snack daypart was up 1%.

This was the third consecutive year of positive customer growth for breakfast, which had been the weakest restaurant daypart as recently as 2009. Each of the other three meal period has seen only one positive performance over the past four years.

Quick-service restaurants drove the morning daypart with a 4% increase for the 12 months ended in December 2013. At midscale/family-dining restaurants, 3% fewer customers came for breakfast in 2013 compared with the previous year.

NPD forecasts a 7% growth in breakfast traffic over the next nine years, with QSR again outpacing the industry with a 9% increase. Taco Bell’s plan to take its breakfast program national should help the QSR total.

“Breakfast continues to be a bright spot for the restaurant industry as evidenced by the number of chains expanding their breakfast offerings and times,” said Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant industry analyst.  “A restaurant morning meal serves a variety of needs. In addition to helping us jump start our day, it satisfies the need for convenience, is less costly than other restaurant meals, and is readily available to us.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Breakfast makes a comeback
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2014/0311/Breakfast-makes-a-comeback
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe