WEST DES MOINES, Iowa—Hy-Vee has added breakfast to the menu of its year-old Mealtime To Go curbside pickup service, according to Nation’s Restaurant News.
The Hy-Vee breakfast menu runs the gamut from skillet, breakfast bowl and omelet entrees to pancakes, waffles, French toast and sandwiches. Other offerings include a breakfast burrito, biscuits and gravy, oatmeal and a gourmet cinnamon roll.
The Midwest chain also introduced 30 breakfast cocktails that range from mimosas, bloody Marys and mixed drinks to sangrias and “hot pours,” such as spiked coffee and hot chocolate. Non-alcoholic beverages available on the regular breakfast menu include fresh-squeezed orange juice, coffee, fresh-brewed iced tea, soft drinks and milk. Breakfast hours and menu items vary by store location, and breakfast cocktails aren’t available at all locations.
Breakfast Mealtime To Go—either ready-to-eat or heat-and-serve meals—can be ordered online or via the Hy-Vee mobile app. When their order is ready, customers receive an email confirmation, go to the store and park in a designated spot. After the customer calls a designated phone number, a Hy-Vee associate brings the food to the customer’s vehicle. Meals are ready in 20 to 30 minutes.
The new breakfast menu was introduced last week amid fanfare at a store in Blue Springs, Mo., where the chain broke a Guinness World Record for the largest serving of pancakes. In just seven hours, 18 Hy-Vee chefs made 13,000 pancakes onsite, breaking the record of 12,716 set in 2017 in Russia. (For more on how businesses can hold their own Guinness World Record event, read “We Are the Champions” in NACS Magazine.)
“What better way to celebrate the launch of our new breakfast menu than with a Guinness World Records title,” said Tina Potthoff, senior vice president of communications, Hy-Vee.
Industry insiders see prepared breakfast as a largely untapped opportunity for supermarkets. Breakfast accounts for an average of just over five meals per week in single- and multi-person households, with and without children, according to the FMI-The Food Industry Association’s U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2021 study.
C-store retailers are working to recover early morning traffic, which dipped during the pandemic, by introducing new breakfast products and offering special deals. Read more about it in “Revitalizing Breakfast,” from NACS Magazine.
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