Wendy’s Has High Hopes for Breakfast
The burger chain thinks it has found its winning morning recipe.
Oct 16, 2019
DUBLIN, Ohio—Wendy’s has come up with a winning formula for breakfast success, one that could rake in 10% of its sales, Restaurant Business reports. The burger chain thinks its breakfast menu can generate $1 billion in U.S. sales—all without cannibalizing its current business.
“We’re absolutely confident this is going to work,” said Todd Penegor, CEO. The company has tried breakfast three previous times to middling success. Kurt Kane, president of Wendy’s U.S. market, addressed “the elephant in the room,” namely its previous attempts.
“We didn’t have scale behind it,” Kane said of those earlier efforts. “One of the lessons in the past was, in trying to be all things to all people, we loaded breakfast in a way that kept us from getting into the daypart at all.” This time, the company has the ability to run national breakfast ads, instead of regional marketing. Also, Wendy’s got buy-in earlier from franchisees, which run 95% of its U.S. stores. Finally, the menu’s focus is on drive-thru, rather than eat-in, customers. The streamlined menu has only 18 unique ingredients, a steep drop from a high of 45 on previous breakfast menus.
Wendy’s will put a national advertising campaign behind the menu immediately to build sales fast. “We’ll put full media power behind the breakfast daypart,” Kane said.
The chain also has its own blend of coffee and has incorporated existing products, such as the Breakfast Baconator sandwich, for the morning daypart. A “Frosty-ccino” beverage is also in the works. Wendy’s has been testing the menu at 300 locations this year without any loss of business in other dayparts, setting up for what could be a promising nationwide launch of the new menu.
