CHICAGO — McDonald’s Corp.’s all-day breakfast strategy seems to be working, The NPD Group, a leading global information company, reported in its most recent study. Two months into the company’s deployment of all-day breakfast, lapsed customers are returning to the chain and lunch visits are rising.
“This preliminary review of McDonald’s all-day breakfast offer suggests consumers are receptive to ordering McDonald’s breakfast foods beyond traditional breakfast hours,” said Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant industry analyst and author of the study. “It’s early and there are other questions to answer as time goes on, but for now it is working.”
McDonald’s began testing all-day breakfast in select markets last year as part of its efforts to reverse three years of sales declines in the United States, the company’s largest market. McDonald’s said all-day breakfast was the No. 1 request of its customers. The company’s turnaround plan is gaining momentum — McDonald’s reported its first gains in U.S. and global sales in two years during the third quarter of fiscal 2015.
Purchasing behaviors of breakfast customers show that one third of them had not purchased food from McDonald’s at all before the all-day breakfast launch in October, NPD said. The study also revealed that McDonald’s customers were ordering breakfast foods beyond the traditional daypart and were most interested in ordering breakfast foods for lunch.
“Among consumers purchasing breakfast foods at McDonald’s during lunch hours, 61% of their receipts also included non-breakfast items, which contributed to a bump in average check size,” NPD said in its report.
Orders of breakfast foods throughout the day increased from 39% pre-launch to 47% post-launch, NPD said in its “Checkout Tracking” study, which analyzed a database containing receipts from more than 27,000 McDonald’s static buyers who visited before and after the McDonald’s all-day breakfast launch.
