16 Best Restaurant Chain Breakfasts In America

Breakfast is a sacred time of the day. It kick-starts our metabolisms, satisfies our morning hunger pangs, and helps us take on the day. America adores this meal and is happy to eat it at any time. While breakfast is revered on the regular, it suddenly takes on a whole new level of importance after a particularly rambunctious evening. Whether you just won the big game or are crawling in after a night of gratuitous partying, breakfast is a time to nurse wounds, satisfy cravings, and bond over a delicious meal.

Click here for the 16 Best Restaurant Chain Breakfasts in America (Slideshow)

But when you're in need of a pancake at midnight or long for an omelette after your morning errands, where can you go and which place is the best? To help make your most important morning decision a little easier, we sought out to discover which chain offers the best breakfast for first-meal lovers.

How did we decide who was the reigning breakfast champ?

We searched for the largest, most well-known chains for breakfast and pitted them against each other by five defining criteria. First, we rated each chain on the number of value meals available. These options are the heartiest, best bang for your buck dishes on the menu that get you a little taste of every type of breakfast. We then considered the amount of menu options available in total that favor breakfast and the variety that was available. Average customer ranking across the board from a one to five rating played an important role as well. We then assigned a value to the hours of operation a restaurant kept, weighing in favor of spots that were open 24/7 and had breakfast available at any time versus all day breakfasts with limited hours and spots that only offered morning breakfast options. For the last factor of our analysis, we considered editorial discretion that took things like number of locations, menu variety, and overall appeal into consideration.

So from West Coast favorites to nationwide spots, we ranked the best restaurant chain breakfasts available. To learn who nabbed the number one spot, click through our slideshow!

Lauren Gordon is the Entertain and Holidays Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on twitter @laurengordon88