Did mcdonalds bring back all day breakfast

McDonald's all-day breakfast was put on hold due to COVID-19, and no one is sure when it's coming back.

If you’re the kind of person who ordered hash browns for dinner or a Chicken McGriddle for lunch, you might have been in for a surprise back in 2020. McDonald’s all-day breakfast was put on hold due to COVID-19, and no one is sure when—or even if—it’s coming back.

It definitely put a lot of people off, especially since items like the Egg McMuffin are some of the best-selling McDonald’s items of all time!

Why Was All-Day Breakfast Put on Hold?

In 2015, McDonald’s extended its breakfast hours to include all-day McMuffins instead of cutting the morning foods off at 10:30 a.m. This change was ideal for people who wanted hash browns and hotcakes in the afternoon.

But behind the scenes, all-day breakfast was causing headaches for staff. The major complaint was that the breakfast orders clogged up the kitchen workflow, slowed down the line and made work harder for employees scrambling to fill orders.

The elimination of all-day breakfast was meant to be a temporary fix as the restaurant industry figured out social distancing practices. But fast-forward to 2 years later and there’s still no all-day breakfast. McDonald’s issued the following statement about all-day breakfast at the time: “We removed All Day Breakfast from the menu to simplify operations in our kitchens, which we saw provided better speed of service and order accuracy.”

But the chain didn’t add any concrete details, only saying that a decision would be made based on consumer demand and the ability to keep operational disruptions at bay.

Is There Hope on the Horizon?

There have been glimmers of hope, though. McDonald’s has reintroduced items, like ice cream cones, that it eliminated in March 2020 to simplify menus.

More recently, a screenshot of a press release in September 2022 apparently declared that McDonald’s would bring back all-day breakfast. However, according to CNBC, this screenshot was taken from a press release from 2015, when McDonald’s originally came out with all-day breakfast. McDonald’s fans around the internet were left disappointed, and have returned to keeping an eye out for any announcements from the fast-food giant.

In the meantime, anyone who misses being able to order breakfast items all day can try their hand at making an Egg McMuffin, the original on-the-go breakfast. Interestingly, the McMuffin almost didn’t make it to the menu—but we’re sure glad it did.

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Last week, some fans of McDonald's  (MCD)  hash browns and hotcakes may have inadvertently help spread some fake news -- despite a viral tweet saying otherwise (which has since been deleted), the fast-food chain has no plans to bring back all-day breakfast this fall. 

A restaurant representative confirmed that the menu announcing that all-day breakfast would be served from Oct. 5 was from 2015, when the chain first launched its all-day breakfast menu.

In the following seven years, McDonald's breakfast availability has gone through endless tweaks and changes. Some popular breakfast sandwiches are, in fact, available all day at many locations but since 2020, the chain's full breakfast menu is sold only between opening and 11 a.m.

This is done, in large part, to maximize the use of appliances and limit the number of items workers need to cook during busy periods. Larger locations can offer more items at all hours, while in Canada some McDonald's locations continue to serve all-day breakfast.

“So wait all day breakfast isn’t a thing outside Canada?? Damn we actually have a W in something," on Canadian tweeted on Sept. 1. (Due to import laws and different menu development processes, many popular fast food LTOs never make it to Canada.)

Café McDonald's and Breakfast

On Tuesday, McDonald's announced that it would make its Cheese Danish available all day starting September 14.

Made with a cream cheese filling and a vanilla cream drizzle, the cheese danish is a fast-food version of the popular European pastry. Starbucks  (SBUX)  offers a similar one while McDonald's had a cheese Danish on its breakfast menus in the 1980s. The new one is a nod to the company's history.

"The Cheese Danish, which is a fresh take on a pastry McDonald's first offered in the '80s, joins an all-star roster of McCafé Breakfast items including the Apple Fritter, Blueberry Muffin, and Cinnamon Roll," the company said in a release.

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The McCafé concept, which started out of McDonald's Australia in 1993, serves coffee and accompanying sweet treats. Different countries serve everything from the beloved American muffin to Oreo Roll cheesecake in Japan and croissants and macarons in France and Switzerland.

As always, the new item will be available at restaurants, through the McDonald's drive-thru, and online on the McDonald's website and mobile app.

Breakfast Is An Important Meal (For Fast Food Companies)

McDonald's has dominated the fast-food breakfast market for years -- the chain offers an extensive menu, while items like the Egg McMuffin and the hash browns remain generational favorites.

The chain brings in roughly 25% of its sales before noon.

While other chains previously offered only one or two breakfast items as a "see, we have it too," recent years have brought a real breakfast explosion in the fast food space. Data from the NPD Group found that dine-in breakfast sales grew by 51% between the fall period in 2020 and 2021.

Companies like Wendy's  (WEN)  have been drawing on such numbers to invest heavily in menu development -- the Dublin, Ohio-based burger chain has launched a range of new breakfast sandwiches in an effort to unseat the Golden Arches.

"This was driven in part by growth in our breakfast business, which reached 8.5% of U.S. sales at the peak of our very successful Buck Biscuit promotion and global digital acceleration, which grew to approximately 10% of sales by year-end," Chief Executive Todd Penegor noted that during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in March.