Updated: Jun 19, 2020
"We are thinking about adding breakfast to our restaurant. We are paying the rent anyways and are not using our dining room! Do you think it’s a good idea to offer breakfast? How can we make it a success?" -Jackie
First of all, I want to thank Jackie for asking this question. But to be honest, I can not answer this inquiry directly because I'm not in their operations.
However, I am giving some tips, factors, and variables to consider in offering a breakfast menu to help Jackie decide.
Sadly, in the restaurant business, nothing is black and white. Everything is gray. It depends on a lot of different factors that are involved.
So we are going over the three phases that you need to consider and go through to determine whether it is a good idea to add breakfast:
1. Logistics Phase
You need to assess if you can handle adding breakfast on your menu. As part of the logistics, here are the things you need to think about:
Breakfast Equipment - you may need to purchase new equipment if you are planning to serve breakfast.
Depending on the kind of food you want to have, you may be required to buy kitchen appliances like coffee makers, coffee cups, and saucers, coffee mugs, waffle irons, burners, etc.
Also, you need to ensure that you have adequate storage for breakfast supplies, in both your walk-in fridge and dry goods area.
Shift Staffing - Who among your existing workers would be willing to give up a busy lunch or dinner shift for breakfast?
Average tickets tend to be low during this time, so they may not be making as many tips.
Also, if you don't have enough people to manage the breakfast shift, then you may need to hire new employees to cover it.
Additionally, you need to know your break-even point.
For instance, your staff currently arrive at 10:00 AM, and then you will need four members to come at 6:00 AM to attend the breakfast shift.
That means you have to pay four hours extra for each. So if you have five servers, times four hours, that is 20 hours of payroll.
For an easy Math, if you pay $10 per hour, that's 20 hours multiplied by 10, it's going to be $200 break-even, daily.
Then, you would think about what is the average labor you want to shoot?
For example, the average labor is 25%. You need to figure out if the labor cost is $200, what should your gross sales, so the labor percentage is within range?
For $200 worth of payroll, if we have 25% going with our labor percentage, then the breakfast sales you need per day must be around $800.
From $800, you will have your breakfast schedule from 6:00 AM to 11:00 AM, for instance, you need to hit $800 worth of sales.
So if you are to do that, your average dish, for example, is $10, how many customers per day do you need?
This will lead you to think about what kind of marketing you must have in place to bring in that many customers every day?
I hope this simple computation makes sense to you. That's a quick Math you need to do for you to understand what is the break-even daily that you need to hit.
When you do this, you are not just guessing, but you obtain real numbers.
Timing - Timing is everything. Speed is incredibly essential in the restaurant business.
What is your current reputation in town for your lunch and dinner?
If people expect you to be slow because you have that reputation, it's going to be hard for you to get people in for breakfast.
Why? Because a lot of morning customers, especially during the week, are on their way to work or school. They won't have as much time.
So you need to set a standard on what's going to be the time you want folks to be in and out within 8 to 10 minutes.
Remember that those big companies, like McDonald's and Chick-fil-A, are both successful for their breakfast because, in 2 minutes, they want people in and out.
Sit-down or on-the-go breakfast - Figure what you are going to be.
For instance, you can choose if you want to be a sit-down, or on the go breakfast place.
Is it like Denny's, which is a sit-down where people wait for their food? Then that's going to be different than with what McDonald's and Chick-fil-A are doing, which is fast.
Free WiFi - If you are thinking about adding breakfast, you need to make sure that you offer WiFi.
A lot of customers, including myself, go to coffee shops or restaurants for breakfast to work on their laptop computers most of the time. So it is necessary to have WiFi.
2. Research Phase
The research phase is where we need to study and analyze data. As a proficient researcher, you should not go into something with a preconceived notion. You need factual information.
The first thing to do in this phase is to look into the 3-5 mile radius of your restaurant and observe the following:
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