SugarCreek: Brandworthy Food Solutions

Some of the biggest time and money wasters for QSR managers actually seem pretty benign, but paying attention to training, targeting food safety and getting a handle on your purchasing procedures can help you run your location as efficiently as possible.

Want to serve up perfectly prepared, slow-cooked brisket sandwiches or meaty, flavorful breakfast tacos to your customers during the morning rush? The tenderness and flavor that come from hours of slow cooking may sound like a pipe dream, but Ready-to-Eat (RTE) sous vide proteins can give you an edge when it comes to breakfast. With more fast food locations than ever catching on to the breakfast trend — and the most significant (and sometimes only) area of growth coming in the morning hours — offering quality proteins in the morning can give your brand a much-needed edge.

French is not normally a language that enters into the QSR menu conception and delivery process — unless, of course, you happen to be stopping by a location in Canada or France. Often associated with fine dining, and the high prep costs that come with it, protein preparations like sous vide are an unlikely source of inspiration for an industry bent on speed and consistency.

Looking to take advantage of the hot quick service breakfast market? You need a reliable vendor to supply your fast food restaurant with the breakfast meat it needs. But what should a QSR supply chain manager or chef look for in a breakfast meat supplier? Are there common characteristics that you could use to narrow the field and find the right vendor partner?

Today, let’s examine 4 things quick service restaurants should require of a breakfast meat supplier —  before they sign a vending contract.

Introducing breakfast into a QSR chain for the first time comes with a lot of unknowns. Will your customers be interested in morning meals from your brand? Will your price points be attractive enough for repeat business? Are you offering something unique enough to lure in customers from the competition? With so much focus falling on the operational side of your early-morning expansion plans, don't neglect your best ally for breakfast success in the QSR industry: your supply chain.

Here are procurement tips to start your mornings with a lucrative bang.

It may seem like everyone is jumping into the QSR breakfast game lately. And really, that’s not far from the truth. Breakfast is driving sales industry-wide, up 2.3% in just the past year even as other dayparts falter, according to USA TODAY.

Breakfast has become an increasingly on-the-go meal, too. Just 10 years ago, only 11 percent of breakfast eaters got their meal away from home. Today? It’s up to 28 percent.

But with the rush to put breakfast on the table, we’ve seen a lot of menu copycatting. Just how many breakfast burritos can the market accommodate before consumers become bored and move on? And that’s especially a worry for companies marketing to Millennials. The current generation of young adults has shown a marked tendency to seek new tastes and new experiences — and to quickly tire of the same old, same old.

So how can your fast food restaurant stand out in the breakfast crowd and keep younger consumers interested? Let’s take a look at 4 ways you can distinguish your QSR brand in the red hot breakfast rush.

Breakfast is the latest daypart buzzword in the QSR industry, but successful chains realize that expanding early morning offerings doesn't mean reinventing the wheel. While there are undoubtedly components to in-demand breakfast menu items that will be unique to your supply chain, you might be surprised to learn how much crossover you can consciously infuse into procurement. When it comes to pulling stock reliability up and driving procurement costs down, dayparts that "bleed" into one another might just be the best supply chain decision your brand can make.

Here's how you can make your supply chain — and your menu — work double duty after sunrise.

There are apocryphal stories about immigrants in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries arriving in America having heard stories about “streets paved with gold.” They’re cautionary tales for us — they remind us to temper expectations and avoid buying into baseless hype.

There’s certainly a lot of hype about breakfast in the QSR industry right now. Luckily, it’s not all unsubstantiated. That the AM daypart is a growing sales driver is no mistake — morning fast food sales reportedly grew 2.3% last year, outpacing all other dayparts.

But taking advantage of the hot breakfast market takes more than throwing together a few breakfast burritos and open your restaurant doors. The road to breakfast profits isn’t paved with gold, and it does have a few hazards that you should be on the look out to avoid.

Today, let’s take a look at a few of the biggest challenges fast food companies might encounter when they decide to make the move into new dayparts.

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.