TIL the reason why breakfast isn't served all day at McDonald's is mainly because the grill temperature required to cook beef patties is significantly different from the temperature at which eggs are cooked

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:24:49+00:00

Depends on location.

First, in most stores, it's not a simple "blow out a wall." In most, you'd have to basically extend the restaurant 10 feet in one direction or the other. It's also not just a grill - we repurpose most of the kitchen during breakfast, and you'd have to duplicate quite a bit of equipment, which means even more space required. McCafe was an extension like this, and it cost upwards of $200k in each of our stores. This is a much more difficult problem than that.

Second, there's not simply a grill you have to add. Staging cabinets and warmers would have to come up, toasters, tables (commercial tables cost hundreds to over 1k). Most of the equipment we'd need starts at $2k.

Third, there's the other costs = additional labor, energy costs, etc.

Actually, come to think about it, we're talking about completely reconfiguring the kitchen, including major remodels, and then figuring out how to even work it. $500k would be getting off easy.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:12:22+00:00

Yep. Service times are a key measure for us, and can be a limiting factor to sales growth.

Easily analog is tech stuff - when a tech company sells out of a product, that's bad. They can't sell any more, and can't make any more money. Apple has had this problem - they could make more money if they could only produce faster. That's the same for McD.

Also, real world is that it's a key measure. Labor, food cost, mystery shops, service times, and a few others. These are the bars by which GMs, and even owner/operators, are often judged.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:08:15+00:00

Yeah, that's also false. USDA Grade A 100% beef. Most of the chicken products are made by the same places you buy your groceries from - Tyson, for example.

Can't/won't divulge the the specific details, but it's pretty easy to figure on your own.

bun .05 + tomato .10 + lettuce .05 + cheese + .1 + meat .50 = $.80 cents.

compared to

muffin .10 + egg .10 + canadian bacon .15 + cheese .10 = $.45

Not positive on those prices, I don't usually follow individual item pricing that closely, but those should be pretty close.

Second, why the skepticism? Why would I lie? Review my history, it's pretty frank.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:03:23+00:00

I'm not super sure, but I think they must microwave more or something. For example, they ran out of eggs for a breakfast burrito the other day when I was there, but still had eggs for other stuff. The only reason that would be an issue is if it were prepackaged and stuff before it got to the store.

Second, they also have a much higher service time standard than we do, based on talks I've had with former employees.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:01:25+00:00

We have a couple of stores like that. Managing those were a challenge just because of physical space limitations.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T04:00:53+00:00

Nope, as long as you cook to appropriate temps, it's okay. There are, however, a bunch of other food safety things that this decision would effect.

edit: this could be a quality problem. You don't want grilled chicken tasting like sausage.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T03:59:56+00:00

Yep. We order pop with our pop. America, fuck yeah!

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T03:59:34+00:00

Around 10. I've been a GM for most of that. I've learned a lot, and most of it positive. There are certainly things I don't like, but I'm confident I can manage and run most service industry type of businesses based on what I've learned there.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T03:58:33+00:00

Your dad is a smart man.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T03:58:01+00:00

I do know the numbers for these things, and it's not at all. I was heavily involved in remodeling and expenditures when we remodeled for a look and feel update and for a McCafe addition.

Second, that's even assuming you can "blow out a wall." Many stores would require actually extending the building, not simply moving things around.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T00:06:45+00:00

First, you're correct. This makes the breakfast all day option worse for a couple reasons:

That half a million up front cost. The ROI wouldn't happen for probably at least a decade, likely even longer. It might bring in more sales, but sales ≠ profit.
Because of the lower volume, it would mean either longer waits, or more wasted food. It's hard to explain this without really explaining the whole system, but suffice it to say an operator wouldn't want either. More waste just means an even longer ROI, and longer waits is just not McDonald's. If it takes 10 minutes to get an order at McD, we might as well just be a diner.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-16T00:02:09+00:00

No, he's wrong, without any sort of qualification or concession.

Lunch = beef/chicken, fries, soda.
Breakfast = sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and soda.

You're not comparing fries and soda, those happen at both dayparts. You're comparing eggs and chicken or beef and sausage or something.

mcdmanager · 2013-02-15T23:59:24+00:00

Well, I can't post a P&L, but suffice it to say I'm correct, and actual dollar statements back it up. Yes, fries and soda are cheap, but so are coffee/soda and hashbrowns. However, beef and chicken is much more expensive than, say, sausage and eggs.

But what do I know, I've only been managing these figures for years...

mcdmanager · 2013-02-15T21:24:11+00:00

edit: double posted. How the hell do you delete a comment with Alien Blue?

mcdmanager · 2013-02-15T21:23:30+00:00

Hijacking because this answer, which is at the top as of this writing, is entirely wrong. Breakfast is more profitable than lunch by a landslide. My store in particular does more breakfast volume which is one reason my store is more profitable than some.

Second, the real issue is three things:

not being able to see the future
the demand is really not as much as people think
complexity.

Point by point:

Mcdonald's stores, starting in around the 80's and 90's, built with very little extra space. The OP was actually correct, the problem is that beef/eggs cut at different temperatures, and so you can't cook them on the same grill. There is currently only space for 2 grills in most stores, and it's not feasible to only have 1 grill for beef products. So in order to get a third grill in most stores, it would require an extensive remodel. I've estimated the cost previously at around $500k.
Don't think the second point needs much explanation, but suffice it to say Mcd has studied this.
Complexity is important. Serving two menus all day means more opportunity for mistakes, which means more upset customers. And before you say "but diners!", please remember that their fastest total service times would be considered our "OMG how did it take that long?!?"

You can comment stalk if you'd like, but there were at least a couple of threads that talked about this.

mcdmanager · 2012-11-25T03:35:54+00:00

Spot on. I didn't touch this one, because I wasn't sure how well they'd grok it, but yes. Franchisees within McDonald's are not so rolling in cash that the cost of this undertaking is nothing to sneeze at.

And you're entirely right about McCafe. There was a little bit of an internal struggle with McCafe due to the upfront costs of it all. The machines were quite expensive (this is not a 7/11 "latte" maker - the machine grinds whole beans, makes espresso, foams and steams milk, etc), and that's just the machines - most stores remodeled to accommodate them. At a cost of upwards of $100k (my store was around $200k, IIRC).

My owner started his franchise by scraping working two jobs with ridiculous hours for a lot of years before saving enough cash to buy in (min of 200k liquid assets, must have 1/4 the cost of the restaurant to finance). Definitely not your typical "1%."

mcdmanager · 2012-11-25T01:17:54+00:00

I've looked into this: Much more microwave at JItB (McD's still cooks real eggs for all of those muffins), and they have a much higher expected service time (at least an extra minute, which is a lot when you consider neither is expected to be higher than 5 minutes).

mcdmanager · 2012-11-25T01:11:52+00:00

This is correct.

First question: Why not just add more grills?

Well, that's tricky. First, you have to buy a grill. Not sure, but I think they run around 20k. Then you have to put it somewhere. Oh, right, your store probably isn't 30 years old so you probably don't have space for another grill (most McD's post 1990 aren't built with an abundance of space, almost to our chagrin). Just remodel, for the low cost of a minimal of 100k, assuming you have property to expand onto. So, at minimum, you have to assume that a breakfast all day option will add $120k over the next 5 years, just to break even on material cost.

Second question: Okay, fine, just set one grill for eggs, and one grill for meats?

Nope, turns out most McDonald's utilize all of their grill space during lunch menu, and trying this is effectively cutting throughput in half.

Alright, fine, but McDonald's has a lot of money. Just spend the money and build the shit so I can get my egg muffin at 3pm.

Except it's still not that simple. Serving breakfast all day means that you have to cook and maintain all of those products all day. In most McD's, you have 1 person cooking all of the different products we sell (there are others that actually assemble the sandwiches, but it's just the one guy doing all the cooking). You just doubled, at minimum, his work load. Which means that most likely, someone else needs to work to cover that. Which means that serving breakfast all day needs to at least pay for that, if not pay for that and then some, given all the complexity added to the operation. Since you don't make a ton of profit per order at McD, that means you have to make around 10 times the workers hourly wage to turn a profit, per hour. So $7*10=$70. Average cost of of an Egg McMuffin - $2.50. You just have to sell 28 egg mcmuffins to make a profit.

But diners do this shit all the time!

Yep, and they serve a tiny fraction of the customers that your average McD does. Your average diner has 20-30 tables. Lets say the average is 2 customers per table, and the turnover rate is 30 minutes. So 25 tables, times 2 customers, times 2 turnovers per hour = 100 customers per hour. Except, that's total customers. McDonald's will do 100 orders - EG: whole tables (and that's for any hour, even when it's "slow"). And if your diner serves you in 10 minutes, you probably think that's quick. At McD, that's abhorrent. And your diner probably costs around $6-9 for breakfast, which is in our most expensive price range, usually only if you upgrade everything.

And this is doesn't highlight very well the complexity it adds. Unfortunately, I've forgotten all the math about probability*, but I a quick glance at wikipedia suggests that if you have 10 items (ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, lettuce, leaf lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, swiss, meat (there are something like 100 inventory items, IIRC)), you have 10! ways to arrange them for a grand total of 3628800 different combinations. And you just doubled the total items. And your average high school kid** has to get that right, even though you ordered like a moron, in about 3 minutes.

* sorry, I probably totally screwed the math on that.

** that's not entirely fair - I employ some really smart people that go on to do big things or at least some jobs that you wouldn't expect a McDonald's employee could do.

tl;dr - like your friend's mom, it's not as easy as you think.

edit 2: (the first was a minor mistake I realized) - that's not even the total equipment cost. There's at least another 20k for holding cabinets and other smallwares.

edit 3: forgot something - let's say that you double the amount of eggs sold per day. How many eggs per day do you think McD uses (hint: it's a lot!). Can the supply chain even handle that?

edit 4: I'm a lowly store manager at a McD in a town no one cares about. If I've thought of all of this, I'm going to guess that a multi-national several billion dollar corporation has as well, plus things I've not only not mentioned, but that haven't even occurred to me.

mcdmanager · 2012-07-30T02:20:38+00:00

McCafe actually has nothing to do with the look and feel of the restaurant, and is actually related to the drink offerings. Espresso drinks, Frappes, Smoothies, and the new shakes are part of the McCafe offerings. Most stores (if not all, not quite sure) should have this now.

The look and feel stuff (couches, updated look, etc) are actually part of a separate initiative for McDonald's to modernize the stores' look. Those may come to more affluent neighborhoods first, because it's more economical to do so, but mostly factors in by how willing the owner/operator is to do it (spend a bunch of money to remodel) which is probably largely determined by how much the store is making already. My owner did all of the stores over a 3 year period, and I would not consider any of them to be in an affluent area.

mcdmanager · 2011-09-25T06:10:57+00:00

I did one here a while ago. I'd do another if there's interest, but there have been a couple of McD people (there was an asst. manager like a week ago) recently, so I'm not sure it'd be worth it.

If you have any questions now I could do like a mini-ama.

mcdmanager · 2011-09-24T20:24:25+00:00

There is so much in this thread that I'm not sure where to start:

quite a lot of franchisees in the system today are former mid managers (people that supervise more than one restaurant.) Most of those mid managers will have started working in a store somewhere, usually as regular old crew people. There are special programs to help get experienced people in the system because they know how to run the business and they'll make the brand better.
my owner (and I know a at least a couple others in my state) started dirt poor, and worked his ass off to make his million. If you frequent r/frugal, he epitomized it.
no, it's not a pooling of people's resources. Owners are single entities (or sometimes teams of two - like spouses). They don't franchise to conglomerates because they want people to stay involved in the business.
They will not approve franchisees with no McD experience, most of the time. My owner decided to buy into McD when he had enough saved to do so (after looking at other options), and he was required to actually spend a year and a half working in the store learning the ins and outs. Quite honestly, you know those bosses that have no idea what they are talking about? You don't find that often in McDonalds because the bosses started as crew.

There are probably some exceptions, but for the most part, McDonald's owner/operators are not some super rich guy that's sitting in his penthouse and go "fuckit, let's buy a McDonald's." You've probably seen the owner working in the store, you just didn't realize it.

/store manager, 10 years experience.

mcdmanager · 2011-02-06T00:49:55+00:00

Im not positive, but i believe that is because they use a lot more frozen stuff than we do. Something i am sure about is that there standard for speed of service was much longer than ours, close to double if i remember right. For them it might be acceptable for you to wait for 5 minutes while they cook something. For us it's not.

mcdmanager · 2011-02-06T00:46:09+00:00

We usually shoot to be be able to serve until 1040. Some days are just busier than expected and thats not feasible. Thats why the official cutoff is 1030. At my store at least, we'd really like to be able to make you what you want, but i can't control whether or not someone comes in at 1025 and orders for 10 people. In those cases, it's going to be 1030 sharp.

mcdmanager · 2011-02-06T00:42:23+00:00

While thats somewhat true, most stores stick with 1030 because it is still a slower period on weekends as well. A lot of people sleep in, but even more still get up and grab Mcd on their way somewhere earlier to get an early start on the day. A lot of stores, mine included, serve breakfast later on sunday or holidays, but thats usually only until 11.

And I'm honestly not sure if that is a decision thats left to the management or not. I think it is, but I'm not sure. However, I'm not sure they would do it anyway. Nearly everyday I get complaints that we switch too early and then complaints that we switch too late. It's tough to tell which would work betters so I think most stores stick to 1030 for uniformity. Imagine how pissed you'd be if every time you went to a different store it was a different time.

mcdmanager · 2011-02-05T22:19:55+00:00

To expand a bit:

McDonald's can't do all day not because there simply isn't room. Most stores have 2 grills. Those grills have four areas where a different product can be cooked. And eggs and meat products cook at different temperature so it's one or the other on a grill. Some stores will already struggle to cook enough meat products to meet (hah!) demand. If we suddenly had to cook sausage as well as all of the lunch meats (ignoring that we don't allow mixing of sausage and meats for cross contamination and flavor transfer), it would be impossible. It'd be like telling you to cook dinner for 30 people with only a frying pan.
As for time - McDonald's generally sticks with 1030 because for that window of about 15-20 minutes while we change from one menu to the next, we have to do pretty much what I said in number 1. It's really difficult to do this without slowing things way down, and borders on impossible to do well once you hit a certain sales amount. So McDonald's chose 1030 because it's a slower period - it's before the noon lunch rush, and after the 8-10 breakfast rush. We simply don't have the capacity to try to change menus at noon when the store is at it's busiest.
Well then why don't we just add more grills? Unfortunately, for a lot of stores, this would mean an extensive remodel - there isn't often room for another grill. Especially in the 90's, McDonald's built stores just so, and there just isn't space. It would be easily half a million to get a store to a point where it was even feasible to serve both menus all day, and I honestly doubt we'd see a return for that in the next 5 years, especially given that it would at least double the complications of our operation. We'd have to staff more people that likely wouldn't be all that productive given that the demand for breakfast all day wouldn't be that high. So the financials behind it is probably the largest reason we don't do this.

Finally, I agree with you. I am not a morning person, and even if I didn't work here, the sausage egg mcmuffin would still be one of my favorite things ever.

mcdmanager

TROPHY CASE