You may have heard that McDonald’s (MCD) now makes an egg white McMuffin; Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas is promoting it. If you want to try one, though, you have to get to a McDonald’s outlet before 10:30 a.m. in most locations (or by 11 a.m. on weekends). After that, the company’s kitchens offer only lunch. In our on-demand world, that seems quaint. So when Don Thompson, chief executive officer of McDonald’s, said on CNBC that he would consider serving breakfast all day, a lot of Americans probably thought: It’s about time.
McDonald’s—with 14,000 restaurants in the U.S., many owned by franchisees—can’t always move fast. Back in 2006, then-CEO Jim Skinner said the chain was making operational improvements that would make it possible to offer breakfast 24 hours a day.
Seven years later, the company has few details to offer on how close we are to afternoon hotcakes. “It’s a concept for now—no specifics yet,” Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem, vice president for global communications, writes in an e-mail. (All-day breakfast is available outside the U.S.)
Thompson’s remarks on CNBC came in response to a question posed on Twitter—expanded breakfast hours weren’t part of his talking points. “We have to focus on our existing menu, but we have looked at breakfast across the day,” he said, adding that McDonald’s has looked at “innovative ways” to expand those hours. (Breakfast accounts for about 15 percent of McDonald’s sales.)
One way to open up the schedule is to start serving breakfast once the clock strikes midnight. McDonald’s began testing the idea—appropriately called “Breakfast After Midnight”—last year in 127 locations in Ohio; it proved popular enough to try in Denver and Boston last summer.
Although 24/7 breakfast doesn’t appear to be in our immediate future, Thompson is enthusiastic about the possibility of adding delivery service to U.S. franchises. Soon you might be able to have an Egg White Delight McMuffin delivered to your office—as long as it’s before 10:30 am.
