Can You Still Find McDonald's All-Day Breakfast?
Ever since McDonald's launched its breakfast menu way back in 1972, via CNN, people had longed for the day that they can get a McMuffin for lunch, a McGriddle for a mid-afternoon snack, or even hotcakes for dinner should they be so wild. It wasn't until 2015 that McDonald's announced that it would be launching an official all-day breakfast program nationwide.
For nearly five years, customers could enjoy a combination of hash browns, french fries, breakfast sandwiches, and Quarter Pounders whenever the urge for a cheap, greasy fast-food breakfast struck them. No longer were they shackled to an early morning time limit, now Americans were free to enjoy that most forbidden of culinary delights, "breakfast for dinner," at any time and any day of the week.
Unfortunately, the glory of an all-day breakfast wasn't to last. In 2020, during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, McDonald's announced that it would be suspending its all-day breakfast, via QSR Magazine. The reason for removing the all-day breakfast was to help "streamline" the menu and "simplify" operations for staff and workers.
Even though McDonald's doesn't officially have an all-day breakfast anymore, could it be that some McDonald's locations still serve it?
Some restaurants do offer a very limited all-day breakfast
According to McDonald's, some locations still serve all-day breakfast. As USA Today reports, the times when McDonald's officially begins to serve and end its breakfasts differ from location to location. You may find that a McDonald's in Texas, for example, may serve breakfast from anywhere from 7 am to 10:30 am, while a McDonald's in Boston may serve breakfast from 6 am to 11:00 am. One location in LA, USA Today claims, only begins serving breakfast at 5 am, but also has a limited all-day breakfast menu.
Perhaps if we want to find where else McDonald's serves an all-day breakfast, we'll have to look outside of the U.S. and in Canada for answers. According to Narcity, McDonald's Canada began serving all-day breakfast in 2017, two years after all-day breakfast was introduced in North America — and it seems to still be going on in some locations. McDonald's Canada admits that only select breakfast items are available all day rather than the expansive menu people are so used to.
Will McDonald's ever bring all-day breakfast back?
If McDonald's were to bring back all-day breakfast, it won't have any trouble making a profit. On the other hand, many staff members have actually been glad that the company shelved all-day breakfast. According to Insider, employees found that not only was it a pain to work the breakfast equipment alongside the standard kitchen equipment, but it was incredibly hard to transition from breakfast hours to lunch hours. One example notes that should a customer order breakfast during regular lunch hours, the breakfast order must be prepared exclusively for that customer among the normal requests, so employees have to waste time just to prepare one order. It would be like someone coming up and ordering a McMuffin and hash browns while everyone else ordered cheeseburgers and McNuggets.
Since customers love it and employees seem to dislike it, this further muddies the question of whether or not McDonald's will ever bring back its all-day breakfast nationwide. But stranger things have happened.