Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day and in McDonald's, they are offering their breakfast menu all day every day.
McDonald's recently launched its much anticipated all-day breakfast in a move to solve flailing domestic sales. It is also a way for the fast food chain to compete aggressively against other popular restaurants such as Starbucks and Taco Bell, both of which saw an increase in overall sales because of their breakfast menu offerings.
While the idea was welcomed by die hard McDonald's fans, there are those who feel frustrated with the company's decision on making its breakfast meal offerings as available all day.
This means that customers can now have popular breakfast items such as sausage McMuffin, sausage biscuit, egg McMuffin, etc. even at lunch time and at dinner. Based on the McDonald's official site, other menu items included in their all day breakfast are sausage McMuffin with egg; bacon, egg & cheese biscuit; sausage biscuit with egg; hotcakes; hotcakes and sausage; fruit n yogurt parfait; sausage burrito; fruit & maple oatmeal; and hash browns.
According to franchise owners, the new menu has slowed down the service, reduced the average ticket costs, and created chaos in the kitchen. The revelation came from a poll conducted by Nomura, a Japanese finance company. The poll involved 29 franchise owners who run 226 restaurants across the U.S.
"In small stores, the problems are vast with people falling over each other and equipment jammed in everywhere," wrote one franchisee in a response to a survey.
Another issue brought by the new menu is how it has forced the owners to hire new employees and how it has affected the small stores with an overwhelming lack of space.
"Unfortunately, with the current labor pool in our area, we are struggling to have enough people run the shift, much less add an extra person," said one franchisee.
There was also an observation on how the customers were "abandoning" the restaurant in droves because they see the staff as either too slow or the service as having a sub-par quality.
The implementation of the all-day breakfast came as a result of a vote earlier this year which earned around 90 percent from franchise owners who run 14,350 McDonald's in the U.S.
"It costs more money and their discounting is lowering our prices," said Kathryn Slater-Carter, a former franchise owner of McDonald's. "We are getting fewer dollars in and in the franchise system...the dollars off the top go to the franchisor. So they make the money and then we are left with what's left to pay our bills and pay our crew."
