SugarCreek: Brandworthy Food Solutions

If your morning market share could use a strong cup of coffee, chances are you're slipping when it comes to breakfast. Appealing to the sensibilities of the early morning crowd's hunger is the "moving target" of the QSR industry. While lunchtime and even dinnertime palates are a little flexible, few American consumers care to venture too far afield when it comes to the day's first sustenance. That presents an interesting challenge for QSR breakfast purveyors. Not only do they have to prove themselves in the normal arenas of customer hearts and minds — variety, taste and value — they also have to prove they're a better place to spend precious minutes in a hectic morning routine.

What's an upstart chain to do in such a volatile battlefield? Look to the — pardon the pun — well-seasoned veterans of the breakfast battle.

There’s no doubt about it. Fast food breakfast is hot. Really hot.

In just the past few years, the breakfast daypart has rocketed to become a lucrative daypart for McDonald’s, Taco Bell and many other national and regional names in the QSR industry. Even as fast food sales have slowed at lunch and dinner time, industry-wide breakfast sales ticked up another 2.3% in just the past year, according to USA TODAY, and they show no signs of plateauing soon.

So how can fast food companies make sure that they get breakfast right? With so much competition in the market, there’s not a lot of room for uncertainty.

Today, we thought we’d take a look at 4 solid tips that your QSR company can use to build a solid, competitive breakfast menu and tap into the sizzling demand.

You've likely heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but does that energy-boosting repast do the same for the business serving it up? In the QSR industry, the answer is, increasingly, affirmative. Eager to turn a profit on hungry customers kick-starting their busy schedules, the industry has been looking to reinvent itself as a morning ritual that extends beyond a quick cup of coffee at the drive-thru. With a glut of fast food options on the market, however, where can one restaurant differentiate itself over a competitor? Surprisingly, it’s the supply chain that can make all the difference.

This blog was originally published on Supply Chain World magazine's editors blog.

Fast food has become the new battlefield for sales, the new frontier for customer-alluring innovations in edibles, and supply chain professionals have taken competition to new heights. Some QSR trends, in particular, are responsible for notching the proverbial bar ever-skyward, with smaller, upstart chains threatening to outpace larger, established competitors on niche offerings and supply chain agility alone. Ignoring these trends is no longer a viable operational option. No matter what your menu hinges on, there is always room to smoothly work in new creations, or tweak your supply chain for efficiency. As you fight to keep your brand on top in the QSR wars, there are three prominent trends that you need to be aware of.

Customers can be fickle. Not every food fad develops into a QSR trend. As cases in point, remember 2004, when fast food restaurants were scrambling to serve burgers as lettuce wraps, or the late ‘80s, when even the big chains ran themselves in circles trying to trim every possible bit of extraneous fat out of their menus? The risk of diving too far, too fast into a food fad is substantial. QSR restaurants that tailor their marketing too specifically toward the mode or don’t diversify their menu offerings can alienate their core customers and leave themselves too exposed to the winds of change.

So how can your company avoid fleeting fashions and focus its attention instead on the food trends that are likely to last? Let’s take a look at the 2 digital signs that could tell you if a food trend is here to stay.

The QSR industry can be pretty cutthroat.

Consumers are spoiled for choice, but they have a finite amount of time and money. What makes eaters choose this restaurant and not that? What makes them choose fast food over grocery grab-and-go items, sit-down casual or staying in and eating at home? Moreover, what keeps a fast food restaurant ahead of its competitors? Cost margins are too tight to allow much room for error. And consumer taste preferences are ever-shifting, so robust marketing and R&D strategies are a must.

Today, let’s take a look at 3 characteristics that can spell the difference between success and failure in the QSR industry.

Breakfast is blurring boundaries in all sorts of ways for the QSR industry. The lines between meal and snack, the time distinction between early morning and later in the day or even late night, and the frontier between old fashioned familiar tastes and new, unexpected flavors are all up for redefinition.

Fast food breakfast has become a tightly competitive market, especially now that many QSR chains are offering breakfast items outside the traditional bounds of the morning daypart. But consumer demand for quick, convenient breakfast foods has proven itself to be very strong. At McDonald’s, for example, all-day breakfast items reportedly now account for an estimated 25 percent of all sales. Results like those have made breakfast so attractive that many fast food franchises — even those that have never before tested it — are taking steps to enter the market.

Before launching their breakfast lines, though, there are 3 “Ls” QSR companies should consider:

This piece was originally published on Supply & Demand Chain Executive.

Breakfast is becoming a sandbox for QSR innovation in new food and new processes. Demands for fresh fare, locally sourced produce and specialty versions of classic ingredients are clamoring for their turn in the spotlight, and customers are enthusiastically partaking. These new eating trends come with logistics demands of their own, but when you factor in the call for longer "breakfast" times, it becomes even more challenging. With new products and new demand windows on the horizon, can your current sourcing and logistics keep pace with QSR industry challenges? The most in-demand item on your supply chain breakfast menu should be a heaping scoop of agility.

One of the hottest fast food trends this year has been the resurgence of quick-service breakfast. Many fast food companies have watched the successful launch of Taco Bell’s breakfast and McDonald’s all-day breakfast menu and wondered if they, too, might be able to get in on the bonanza.

But to capitalize on breakfast, a company must first master the basics that have made grab-and-go morning bites so attractive to the modern consumer. Today, let’s take a look at the 3 must-haves for any company that wants to succeed in the competitive AM daypart.