Breakfast has long been touted as the most important meal of the day, and whether your #teambreakfast or #teambrunch, it’s hard to miss breakfast as a huge profit maker for the convenience channel. In CSP’s 2016 The Business of Food report, 62% of consumers reported purchasing prepared food from a cstore, this is a 10 point increase from last year. Couple that with the fact that 55% reported buying breakfast at c-stores AND the fact that Millennials and Generation Z are both more likely to buy food from a c-store than any generation previously and you can see where this trend is going.
Today we look at cstore breakfast foodservice, strictly from a numbers point of view. Seriously, these statistics are so good, they deserve a blog post of their own! We’ll also discuss how important cstore breakfast is to any foodservice strategy and how you can improve your profits with some simple tips for managing your breakfast program. So grab your coffee, and a breakfast sandwich and let’s dive right in.
There are a million reasons why a person might eat breakfast away from home, but here are the top five reasons consumers chose to purchase breakfast from a cstore, as listed in a recent Kellogg Co. study.
It’s important to understand the why behind the buy, as this allows you to tailor your breakfast line up to be most appealing to your audience. For example, knowing that people are eating while shopping or while traveling to work or school, you need to offer breakfast items that are easy to eat, portable and handheld. A plate of eggs and bacon or a bowl of oatmeal isn’t going to appeal to a person with limited time, who is on the move. In this example, a breakfast sandwich or breakfast burrito is a much better solution.
When more than half the population enjoys a beverage, you’d be foolish not to offer it. Coffee has a super low barrier to entry and as such, most convenience stores are already selling it. The next logical step is to begin selling items that pair well with coffee. Whether it’s freshly baked muffins and baked goods or a biscuit sandwich, you’ve got almost 50% of your audience craving food to go with their coffee.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the idea of stepping into foodservice to accompany your coffee: start small. You can open yourself up to an entire menu of items with the simple addition of a high speed oven to your lineup. MultiChef, for example, can bake, roast, reheat, toast, melt and steam foods. So you can add baked goods, breakfast sandwiches and even breakfast pizza all to your menu with just one piece of cooking equipment. See, cstore breakfast CAN be easy!
When you’re looking at what is going to make you the most amount of profit over time, foodservice is where it’s at. You can make over double the profit on a foodservice item than you can on a non-foodservice item. Seriously, double! And some foodservice items do even better than that – think about the cost to make a breakfast sandwich, versus how much you can actually sell it for!
It’s also important to know that almost one third of all cstore traffic occurs during the breakfast/brunch rush – which means you’ve got the audience already, it’s just a matter of getting them to buy the items that will generate the most profit for you!
The statistics are 100% in favor of cstore breakfast being the area to focus on when it comes to driving profits, but how do you make it all happen?
As a visual learner, I am a huge fan of infographics. So if this blog wasn’t your style, check out this infographic which covers the same statistics! Feel free to share it with friends you think might benefit from it most and as always,
Happy FRYday!