McDonald’s Continues To Tease Possibility Of Extended Breakfast Hours

Here’s a Mc10:35 — the Frankenstein’s monster created by combining a McDouble and an Egg McMuffin. (photo: acadiel)

Fans of the Mc10:35 — that combo burger/McMuffin sandwich that McDonald’s customers can only make when ordering during the change-over between the breakfast and lunch menus — may have to rename their favorite fast food item. The Golden Arches says it is indeed considering the possibility of extending the hours it serves breakfast to customers.

In a food marketplace with so many non-McDonald’s options available to consumers, the fast food giant has been looking for ways to keep customers interested in its offerings. The company recently admitted that its menu had become overcomplicated, so perhaps it should just be making its still-popular breakfast menu available for just a bit longer in the morning.

The target, explains a McDonald’s exec, would be those 20-something customers who are more in the “brunch” mindset than their early-rising parents.

“We know, as an example, that breakfast on the weekend cut off at 10:30 doesn’t go very well,” Jeff Stratton, head of McDonald’s USA, tells the AP, while declining to provide any specifics on the when and how it would do so, saying, “we’re just beginning…. We’re just taking a look at it.”

The mega-chain is not currently testing extended breakfast hours, but last summer it expanded the number of 24-hour McDonald’s that serve both lunch and breakfast items on the “After Midnight” menu.

Those restaurants do not include the full breakfast menu during the late-night hours, freeing up the kitchen to make the non-breakfast orders. Maybe that’s a solution for extending breakfast hours — making a handful of the most popular items available for an additional hour or so while the kitchen also starts on lunch?

by Chris Morran via Consumerist