Digital Ordering Breakfast Goes Modern

Consumers Increasingly Turn To Digital Ordering For Their Breakfast Needs

National digital spending on breakfast items via delivery apps is up 263% from 2020

by HETAL PANDYA

As the world moves toward a recovery from the pandemic, the return of consumer’s morning breakfast routines bring an opportunity for restaurants to win back early morning sales that fell in 2020. But many consumers and remote workers have already adapted to new routines that include ordering their breakfast online.

Competition for digital breakfast orders remains strong, with fast casual and quick service restaurants making headlines for introducing new menu options to entice hungry customers. Last summer, we saw Starbucks begin offering a plant-based breakfast sandwich made with Impossible sausage while Panera introduced free coffee subscriptions. In 2021, Burger King and Tim Hortons added new breakfast sandwich options to their menus while Wendy’s reported better-than-expected earnings due in large part to their launch of several brandnew breakfast offerings.

According to new national research from the leading source of competitive intelligence and digital ordering insights for restaurants, Edison Trends, seven of the most popular QSR chains in the breakfast arena saw digital spending on breakfast foods via food delivery services increase 263% this year over its equivalent time in 2020.

Looking at each chains’ year-overyear (YoY) growth in digital spend on breakfast items as of the week of April 5, Dunkin’ saw the largest increase, growing over 750%. They also saw a pronounced increase in spending last fall following their introduction of their fall menu, which featured three new breakfast items. Starbucks was second for YoY growth with a 340% increase, and Taco Bell third with just under 250%. McDonald’s grew 208%, Wendy’s 156%, Burger King 133%, while Jack in the Box grew 34%. McDonald’s also saw a sharp spike in November, which occurred after the addition of two new breakfast items — the chicken McGriddle and McChicken biscuit.

Among these seven restaurants, McDonald’s took in the largest slice of what customers spent online on breakfast foods through food delivery services, though that slice is not as large as it was a year ago. As of the week of April 5, 2021, the restaurant claimed 42% of breakfast food sales among all seven restaurants. A year before, McDonalds held a larger breakfast market share at 48%. Dunkin’ is currently second with 22%, Starbucks is third at 15% and Taco Bell next with 12%. Wendy’s takes 5%, Burger King 3% and Jack in the Box 2%.

Edison Trends restaurant insights indicate that the “Breakfast Wars” remain very competitive following the digital ordering trends from last year. Heading into the New Year 2022 will be interesting to determine which other restaurants will grow their breakfast offering in digital, off-premise and other channels to cash in on the opportunity.

Source: Edison Trends. Note: Edison Trends set the week and vendor with the highest spend at 100, and the other values were scaled accordingly. This analysis was performed on over 70,000 food delivery service transactions.

Hetal Pandya is co-founder and VP of marketing at Edison Trends, the nation’s trusted source for restaurant digital ordering research. Edison Trends research is based on a sample of anonymized and aggregated e-receipts from millions of consumers in the United States. Visit Trends.edison.tech to learn more.