MOST BENEFIT TO QUICK SERVICE OUTLETS
Breakfast is the only restaurant daypart with sustained visit growth over the last several years, according to The NPD Group. As a result, classic foodservice breakfast fare, like bacon, breakfast sandwiches, and pancakes, are also growing. Case shipments of bacon, eggs, and pancakes from broadline distributors to foodservice outlets have increased as have servings of these foods ordered at restaurants and other foodservice outlets. There’s no end in sight to the trend of Americans eating breakfast outside the home—as evidenced by McDonald’s deciding to offer its breakfast menu all day, every day.
Breakfast/morning meal visits grew by 5% in the year ending June 2015 over the same period last year when visits grew by 2%, reports NPD’s CREST ongoing foodservice market research. Quick service restaurants, including retail foodservice, were responsible for most of the visit gains at breakfast. Lunch was up 1% in the period over a 2% decline the prior year and dinner visits were flat. Breakfast sandwiches and bacon, perennially popular grab-and-go breakfast foods, have been growing but so have other not-so-portable foods, like pancakes.
Case shipments of bacon shipped from broadline foodservice distributors to restaurants and other foodservice outlets increased by 7% in the year ending June 2015 compared to year ago, finds NPD’s SupplyTrack, a monthly service that tracks every product shipped from major broadline distributors to foodservice operators. Case shipment of eggs, the food item likely to be found in the middle of a breakfast sandwich, increased by 5% in the period, and case shipments of pancakes shipped to foodservice outlets also increased by 5%.
Bacon servings ordered at restaurants and foodservice outlets increased by 2%, which translated to a servings volume of 1.1 billion, in the year ending June 2015 compared to a year ago when servings increased by 6%. Breakfast sandwich servings increased by 3%, or a total of 3.6 billion servings, over flat growth prior year. Servings of pancakes ordered increased by 7% to 816 million servings in year ending June 2015 over year ago when servings were down by 4%, reports NPD.
“Growth at the breakfast daypart has been good for the industry and also led to an increase in distributor sales within key breakfast operator segments,” says Annie Roberts, vice president of NPD’s SupplyTrack. As breakfast traffic continues to grow, she says competition in the breakfast space will require distributors, manufacturers, and operators to become innovative in providing quality and value at breakfast.
It’s clearly a hot segment—and as the competition increases, advertising is needed for restaurant chains to differentiate themselves from their competition. For TV account executives, it should be a way to bring home the bacon.