That was the question vexing some diners at Sonic Drive-In when the chain began introducing its breakfast menu on a nationwide basis three years ago.

The fruit wrap was already in 400 units, but it just wasn’t proving as popular as it had been in the chain’s hometown of Oklahoma City, according to Debbie Nance, director of print and creative services at Sonic Corp. “The name was confusing,” she says. “Taquitos mean different things in different parts of the country.”

One thing was certain, however. Fruit is not shelf-stable, and quality is too easily compromised when there’s confusion over such an item. The decision was made: drop the taquito in favor of the equally sweet and portable—though infinitely more familiar—French toast sticks.

You can’t blame Sonic for trying. With the purported public interest in healthy fare—and with wraps and burritos holding the seventh place among most popular breakfast items ordered in 2003, according to The NPD Group/NPD Foodworld/CRES—a fruit tortilla would seem a natural breakfast winner. But menu perplexity just doesn’t cut it in what is arguably the most rushed daypart for consumers.

“People are in a hurry in the morning,” says Hal Sieling, an independent foodservice industry consultant in Carlsbad, California. “They want to get in and out but still have the foods they’re interested in eating.”

The morning ritual of dashboard dining is indeed growing. Overall restaurant traffic dipped slightly in 2003, by 1 percent in all restaurants for the year ended August ’03, according to The NPD Group. Morning meal traffic, however, climbed 3 percent at quick-serve restaurants. That’s especially impressive

considering that the other dining segments—mid-scale and casual—dropped by 7 percent each during the breakfast hours. “The quick-serve segment has pretty much had the opportunity to take over the breakfast segment because most of the restaurants don’t compete in it anymore,” says Sieling.

And that explains why chains like Sonic are willing to put aside any reservations concerning the added costs of labor and food that breakfast may entail in order to enter the fray. But it’s not as simple as introducing a new menu. In fact, breakfast might well be one of the more difficult dayparts to tackle. While it can indeed be an impulsive event—many people leave the house convinced they won’t be eating breakfast and change their mind when they see something tempting, for example—it’s also highly habit-driven. “People go to the same places over and over,” says Sieling. Quick-serve chains need to work hard to change the habits of customers at a time of the day when behavior is as ingrained as the number of times one is willing to hit the snooze button.

Because Sonic executed a cautious rollout—it started the process in 1999 and finally had the whole system on board by the fall of 2003—it was forced to take a local marketing strategy with limited radio, television, and print advertising as it entered each market. Grassroots efforts—stores delivering breakfast to local radio deejays during the morning rush hour, for example—also paid off.

While it’s still relatively early days for the nationwide breakfast menu, Nance says that most units have benefited from the increase in traffic, with the more experienced units garnering a healthy 13–14 percent of their overall sales during the breakfast rush. And she adds that this added business isn’t cannibalizing from other dayparts, because one mark of distinction for the chain is that it offers its breakfast all day. “Part of our brand and culture is that you can get anything at any time,” she says. “We did not want to have to tell a customer ‘No, I’m sorry but we can’t serve that to you.’”

She says that most stores aren’t yet enjoying more than 10 percent share in breakfast sales but this is the target for a systemwide average.

That’s nowhere near the 40 percent of overall business Hardee’s boasts for its breakfast daypart. But Hardee’s, it can be argued, is a special case. The 2,100-plus chain decided two decades ago to focus on the then relatively ignored breakfast daypart, pioneering made-from-scratch buttermilk biscuits to draw in hungry breakfast-eaters. It helped that the restaurant began in the Southeast, where breakfast and biscuits are synonymous. Even today, the region leads when it comes to eating outside the home in the morning, according to Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for the St. Louis, Missouri–based chain. “Breakfast in the South is a bigger percentage of sales,” he says.

That could go a long way towards explaining the popularity of its breaded pork chop biscuit, introduced last year.

Because of its strong breakfast history—and strong brand association with breakfast—Hardee’s doesn’t have to worry about marketing basics as much as a newer player to the daypart. For example, many of its locations were originally chosen on the basis of the morning commute and still enjoy that position, says Haley.

In fact, the company has been spending the lion’s share of its marketing budget over the past year or so on its revamped lunch and dinner menu, says Haley. He adds that limited television and point-of-purchase material is enough to keep the brand’s breakfast position top-of-mind. It also found time to launch a loaded omelet biscuit that was originally a limited-time offer but did so well that it was made part of the permanent menu.

What the company won’t engage in, however, is the messy discounting that can plague the daypart. To encourage trial, it’s standard practice to issue coupons to potential customers, through direct mail or freestanding inserts (FSIS), as an incentive to change behavior. While Hardee’s does follow this practice, it prefers to rely on advertising, says Haley, adding that there are risks to printing off too many coupons. “If we overdid them, people might begin to view the food as being something you’d buy only on a discount basis,” he says. “We watch that very carefully.”

Bojangles’ Restaurants has no such reservations. Faced with a slight decline in breakfast transactions in ’02, the Charlotte, North Carolina–based chain decided to promote its breakfast dollar-menu in 2003, according to Randy Poindexter, senior vice president of marketing.

Whether the quick-serve industry likes it or not, there are customers who will shop around for value-priced breakfasts, he adds. “There’s a percentage of quick-serve breakfast–eating population that want the 99-cent item every day.”

The strategy seems to be paying off, at least in terms of getting traffic in the door each morning. “We have seen a bump in transactions in the breakfast daypart,” he says. More importantly, however, people are still drawn to the premium menu items. “The biggest selling item on our menu is still our chicken filet biscuit,” he says, adding that it sells for over $2.

“[Discounting] is risky because you may get what you ask for—a consumer who is only looking for a discount,” says Don Perry, vice president of public relations for Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A. The chain prefers to rely on the power of advertising to increase traffic. In fact, it uses its infamous cow self-preservation campaign to support the breakfast menu as well, he says.

Chick-fil-A is in a unique position in that, while it has always offered a breakfast menu of sorts, it was limited in scope because most of the chain’s units were located in malls, where operating hours allowed for a danish and coffee at most before the lunch rush.

With its move to street locations in the ’90s, however, the company knew that it had to relaunch a breakfast menu more in line with traditional quick-serve offerings—hot and fast. “We had to play a bit of catch-up,” says Perry, adding that the chain had to break the automatic assumption that Chick-fil-A was a lunch and dinner destination, thanks to its mall history. It decided to kill two birds with one marketing stone. “Part of our strategy as we built on the street was to use breakfast as part of the introduction,” he says. Flyers with coupons, limited radio advertising, billboards, and the like called attention to the fact that Chick-fil-A opens for a full breakfast.

The added challenge for the chain—and one that it’s constantly putting its marketing dollars towards—is encouraging consumers to move beyond the typical eggs-and-sausage offerings and consider chicken first thing in the morning. “We are teaching people that it’s okay to eat chicken for breakfast,” he says.

The company is also only too aware of the fact that breakfast entails the same challenges posed by other dayparts, particularly when it comes to the fickle customer. “The consumer is becoming so demanding,” he says. “They want more variety in the entire menu.”

There’s also the issue of the “wow” factor, says Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic in Chicago, who directed a study on breakfast habits two years ago. “No one has been able to come up with anything that consumers are really wowed by,” he says. No one recently, that is, except McDonald’s. The chain’s McGriddles sandwiches, launched last summer, incorporate the taste of pancakes and syrup with the more popular sausage, bacon, eggs, and cheese variations in a portable, relatively tidy package.

“People are looking for something that is filling and that can give them a sense of satisfaction as they start the day,” says Professor Stanton. “McGriddles fits the bill.”

 The mass-market campaign for the new product, which included TV, radio, print, outdoor, and direct mail boldly highlighted the product’s “weirdness” factor upfront. And consumers seem to be responding positively. (McDonald’s declined to be interviewed for this story.)

But the real wow contenders these days, according to Goldin, are packaged-goods companies, which are busy delivering portable, healthy, and tasty breakfast foods to supermarket shelves. Think breakfast bars, yogurt tubes, and bagel bites. “They meet the needs of consumers on the go and consumers looking for a product with a reasonably good health profile,” he says. Quick-serve chains are inevitably losing out to these handheld offerings, he adds.

Not so, insists Haley of Hardee’s. “Grocery stores aren’t a significantly greater competitive threat than they have been in the past because the benefits of fast-food—a good, hearty, and hot breakfast—is difficult to get with a frozen microwave product or cold breakfast options.”

The key is definitely keeping consumers interested, says consultant Sieling. “It’s pretty important to reinvigorate your business with something new and innovative.” And that’s particularly difficult for the conservative breakfast crowd. “It’s a little more difficult to be innovative because people expect certain things for breakfast, and when you wrap that into the situation where it has to be portable, that’s another problem.”

Dunkin’ Donuts began wooing consumers with a new breakfast sandwich offering last December, promoted nationally. This is big news for the company as it last introduced a new sandwich product back in ’96, with the launch of its bagel line. John Gilbert, vice president of marketing for the chain, says that the company tends to introduce flavor variations over brand-new products. Though not a true national chain—it only enjoys 35 percent nationwide penetration, with 4,000 locations in 39 states—Dunkin’ is a strong brand and has national aspirations, says Gilbert.

The most significant news to come from the doughnut giant, however, is its launch last fall of its espresso-based beverage line. What it calls the “democratization of espresso, ” the line includes all the variations found at the local cafe—including iced versions—without the confusing sizing and high prices. “It’s time for us,” says Gilbert. “Our customers are ready for it.” He points out that espresso-based drinks are no longer exotic to Americans, thanks to the popularity of Starbucks and its ilk. In fact, Dunkin’ doesn’t have to worry about educating its consumers as they are now all-too-familiar with premium coffee products—how to drink them and when. The “when” is critical as many Americans, like their European counterparts, enjoy an espresso pick-me-up in the late afternoon, which provides another daypart opportunity for the chain.

As the number-one retailer of coffee-by-the-cup—nearly one billion cups of coffee sold each year—the company expects great things of the product line.

“It’s raised the bar,” says Technomic’s Goldin. “Consumers have gotten accustomed to a better cup of coffee.” The added bonus to this trend of upgraded coffee is that quick-serve chains can also upgrade the price, he adds.

Many quick-serve chains are looking into changing their coffee offerings, says consultant Sieling. When it began its breakfast program, Sonic was keen on offering a dark premium roast and looked at co-branding opportunities before deciding to source its own roast that it subsequently called HopJava Coffee. Chick-fil-A, meanwhile, offers the traditional cup of coffee but has plans to look into different roast offerings. And, last year, McDonald’s began quietly testing its McCafe concept for the second time in the U.S. (The first was in Chicago in 2001, which closed down after a year.) The concept, a premium coffee in a café setting adjacent or within a traditional McDonald’s restaurant, was first introduced in Australia in ’93. There are now over 300 McCafes overseas and in Canada.

Not all quick-serves believe that consumers are ready for café-style coffee drinks in a traditional quick-serve setting. “I know that we’ve conducted tests and others have conducted tests trying to take fast-food coffee too far,” says Hardee’s’ Haley. “And people aren’t ready to go to a fast-food restaurant for an espresso or cappuccino.”

That’s not to say that a better cup of coffee isn’t warranted. “We have opportunities to do more with it than has been done,” he says. “We are looking at taking it up another notch.”