McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast may frustrate franchisees, but it’s working

In October, McDonald’s franchisees started to grow more vocal with frustrations over the nationwide implementation of All-Day Breakfast. Common complaints include a lack of space and a need for more manpower on hand, with the result being a struggle to maintain customer service.

But it doesn’t seem likely that McDonald’s will be giving up on all-day breakfast any time soon—so far, from a corporate view, the new strategy is working exactly as intended.

According to a new report from research and consulting firm NPD Group, surveying thousands of receipts using the firm’s Checkout Tracking service, McDonald’s has succeeded substantially over the past two months in drawing in new and lapsed customers and increasing store visits. The study observed that a full third of customers buying McDonald’s breakfast foods after normal breakfast hours had not purchased food from McDonald’s at all before October’s nationwide all-day breakfast launch.

Furthermore, the study found that orders of breakfast foods increased from 39 percent to 47 percent of all orders—but because customers often ended up also purchasing additional items from the lunch menu, the result from NPD Group’s data appeared to be a higher average check size than usual.

“This preliminary review of McDonald’s all-day breakfast offer suggests consumers are receptive to ordering McDonald’s breakfast foods beyond traditional breakfast hours,” says Bonnie Riggs, NPD restaurant industry analyst and author of the study. “It’s early and there are other questions to answer as time goes on, but for now it is working.”

Full sales data is still up in the air—the first quarterly report since the nationwide all-day breakfast launch will be released in early 2016, and the numbers then will show the full fruits of this endeavor. But for now, the circumstantial evidence seems to prove that McDonald’s all-day breakfast is here to stay.