By: Mike Rhodes—
Egg McMuffin at 5am? No problem.
Egg McMuffin at 10am? Absolutely.
Egg McMuffin at 4:30pm? What? Ok, that’s new!
Today, McDonald’s officially rolls-out their new all-day breakfast feature across the country.
However, at 4:30pm on Monday, I purchased 4 Egg McMuffins at the McDonald’s on Chadam Lane. Yep. At 4:30pm. For dinner.
According to Jonathan Terhune, McDonald’s area supervisor, all-day day breakfast has been one of the top requests by customers over the last 10 years. “People would always ask us why we couldn’t just serve breakfast throughout the day,” he said.
Until today, there used to be a very good reason why McDonald’s could not serve breakfast all day.
“The grills we have can either cook breakfast OR lunch. Not both. The grills cook at different temperatures. Same thing with our toasters. Our toaster toasts muffins a different way than it toasts buns. So we’ve added a few secondary pieces of equipment—like a specific egg cooker that sits next to the grill that only cooks eggs. And a muffin toaster that only cooks the muffins. The new equipment allows us to serve our breakfast products throughout the day. And we can still serve our regular menu also,” he said.
Jonathan Terhune, area supervisor, stands beside a new in-store display of the all-day breakfast menu. Photo by: Mike Rhodes
All Muncie locations, as well as McDonald’s throughout Central Indiana, should be serving the exact same products. The new all-day breakfast menu will be the same at each location.
McDonald’s started testing all-day breakfast in a few test markets in Nashville and San Diego a few months ago. A recent McDonald’s press release stated that “more than 120,000 people tweeted McDonald’s asking for breakfast throughout the day in the past year alone.”
Jonathan said, “The way social media works, people have been talking about the test markets online after they started hearing about all-day breakfast. We started practicing and soft-selling in our Muncie locations last week. We’ve been trying to practice and test things out before the official launch. We’ve been getting the crew trained and equipment set-up and tested. We don’t think people will be lined up down the block for it, but there are many people who are really wanting those products. We expect to see them coming in throughout the day.”
For Jonathan and other people, it was often hard to get to McDonald’s by that 10:30am deadline when breakfast ordering historically stopped to make way for the lunch menu.
“Back in my college days, it was hard waking up and trying to hit that 10:30am mark to get breakfast. It was always such a rush. Now, anytime you’re ready for breakfast, we will have those products available. People won’t have to rush here and worry about getting a speeding ticket trying to get here by the old 10:30am breakfast deadline. Now, they can come for breakfast whenever they want,” he said.
Even at 4:30pm.
