The convenience stores eat breakfast from fast food chains

Fast food restaurants lose breakfast customers in convenience stores.

Morning meal traffic to fast food chains increased by 1% in the three months finished in July, while visits to food convenience stores climbed 9% during the same period, according to the market for market research Circana.

“In the long term, convenience stores have taken part, really in the food service overall, but the morning meal was their solid costume,” David Portalatin, senior vice-president of Circana, and adviser to the food service industry, noted that the trend was widely directed by what the group calls “the stores of food stores”.

For decades, McDonald’s And its rivals tried to attract consumers far from their homes to eat their offers early in the morning, bets that convenience and unique items will win the guests. While fast food chains have made breakthroughs, 87% of what consumers eat and drink in the morning come from their own refrigerators or pantry, according to Portalatin. This leaves many opportunities for fast food channels – and any other person who wants a sliced ​​pie for breakfast.

Before the pandemic, the fast food channels began to see a new rival for their breakfast customers: the convenience stores. Regional channels like Wawa in the northeast and General Casey store In the Midwest, expanding their scope and investing in their catering options, taking pages of the own manuals of fast food companies.

For a certain time, locking and transition to hybrid work reversed these market share gains. But within three months, finished in July, avant-garde convenience stores once again won the top in the battle to serve breakfast for consumers, according to Portalatin.

Circana separates food convenience stores like Buc-Ee and Sheetz from broader industry, although more channels can soon adapt under this umbrella. 7-Eleven, the greatest convenience, or C store, in the United States, plans to invest more in its business of prepared food products, inspired by the success of its Japanese activities. Wednesday, the C-store channel announced Wednesday that it was buying Belly For around 566 million dollars, although it is not clear what its plans for the sandwich chain include beyond the widening of its imprint.

In recent years, more and more guests have watched their budgets, aware of the rise in menu prices and a tight labor market.

Matinal traffic from one year to the next year to fast food channels has dropped each quarter in the past three years, according to income management data solutions, which advises restaurants on how to increase sales and profits. In the second quarter, fast food breakfast visits dropped by 8.7%.

To see the difficulties, do not look further than McDonald’s, which dominates the category of breakfast with fast service.

“… The part of breakfast is the most sensitive part of the economic level, because it is the simplest part of a consumer stressed to jump breakfast or choose to have breakfast at home,” said McDonald CEO, Chris Kempczinski, when calling the company’s earnings at the end of July. “And we, as well as the rest of the industry, see that the part of breakfast is absolutely the lowest part of the day.”

McDonald’s morning visits represented 33.5% of its traffic in the first half of 2019, but fell to 29.9% in the first half of 2025, according to. To try to traffic, the channel included breakfast items in its new additional meals, including an agreement for a sausage McMuffin with an egg with brown hash and a small coffee for $ 5.

To reverse the shift in breakfast, fast food chains take clues from their competitors. After years of convenience stores looking for fast food chains for ideas on how to develop prepared food sales, from the installation of order kiosks to new menu elements, the dynamics have been overthrown.

“”[Quick-service restaurants] Look at sales at the end of the evening and sales early in the morning, and they watch convenience stores directly and say: “What works?” How can we bring this to our stores? “” The spokesman for the National Association of Consimity, Jeff Lenard, told CNBC.

The prepared foods have offered a rescue buoy for convenience stores, because the request for petrol, tobacco and lottery tickets fell over time. Global sales of industry food services reached $ 121 billion in 2024, according to NACS data.

Most customers visit the petrol pump during morning and evening rush hours, on the job of work and work, presenting the ideal opportunity for C stores to sell them breakfast or dinner. This year, 72% of consumers interviewed by Intouch Insight said they considered C stores as a real alternative to fast food chains, compared to 56% a year ago and 45% two years ago.

In general, C stores that have focused on fresh foods have won over more customers.

For example, Wawa has seen its customers increase by 11.5% since 2022, while McDonald’s fast food chains, Burger King and Wendy have seen their customers combined decrease 3.5% at the same time, according to Indagari data, a transaction data analysis company.

The majority of 1,170 respondents to an Intouch Insight survey for CNBC said they had bought a breakfast on order in a store in the morning in the last three months. Forty-eight percent of the respondents said that when they chose breakfast in a convenience store, they replace a visit they could otherwise make in a fast food restaurant like McDonald’s or Dunkin ‘.

Buying coffee and breakfast in a C store will probably be cheaper than doing it at home. But consumers perceive it as “a good blow for their money”, according to Sarah Beckett, vice-president of sales and marketing for Intouch Insight.

In addition, C customers have a wide range of options. In addition to coffee, service stations sell energy drinks, protein shakes and yogurt smoothies. And customers can take a granola or banana bar to accompany their sandwich at breakfast. Fast food chains do not have this kind of variety.

But above all, what matters to consumers is food itself.

“While [a] The convenience store has a certain rear wind to be a lower price, the ultimate differentiator, and what will really distinguish the winners from the losers is this quality aspect, “said the Portlatin de Circana.

Brady Cavnessss, a 33 -year -old account director in Bailiwick who lives in Minneapolis, told CNBC that he was engaging in a pizza for breakfast at the General Casey store when he was traveling. If he is back home, where there is no casey nearby, he will stop at McDonald’s, Dunkin ‘or Starbucks If it is in the mood to buy breakfast.

The Iowa-based channel is the country’s third channel in the country and claims to be the fifth largest pizza concept based on its number of locations. Casey sales growth said 5.6% for its food drinks prepared and provided for the three months closed on July 31.

Like the Mexican pizza of Taco Bell, the pizza of Casey breakfast, garnished with cheese, scrambled eggs and a choice of bacon, sausage or vegetables, has grown with a cult since its launch in 2001.

“I think Casey is a kind of unique thing,” said CavinSss. “All my life, I had the egg mcmuffins.”