7 Fast Food Places Where You Can Order A Burger During Breakfast

The fast food burger is a cornerstone of American cuisine. Hamburger, cheeseburger, with or without bacon, whichever your preference, nationwide joints like McDonald's and Wendy's will have you covered. Even if you're a burger lover who has gone meatless, franchises like Burger King have given Impossible burgers and other meat alternatives regular spots on the menu. International and regional fast food chains will serve you a burger at any hour of the day. Well, almost any hour. As it stands, most fast food establishments with a breakfast menu won't serve you a cheeseburger during breakfast hours. 

If you go to McDonald's before breakfast stops being served (typically 10:30 or 11 a.m. at most locations), you will be limited to ordering off the breakfast menu and won't be able to get a Big Mac, for example. This is the case in most fast food burger joints, but there are a handful of restaurants that will serve you lunch at any hour. You can order a burger for breakfast at any of these seven fast food places. 

Carl's Jr. and Hardee's are two regional American burger chains you may have seen around without realizing they are the exact same brand. Carl's Jr. is predominately located in the Southwest and on the West Coast, while Hardee's locations can be found throughout the Midwest. Regardless of which chain you go to, both are known for serving up hearty, charbroiled burgers that will more than exceed your daily nutritional needs. And at either chain, regardless of if you stop by Carl's Jr. or Hardee's, you will be able to get a charbroiled breakfast burger. 

For starters, Carl's Jr. makes no qualms about serving its burger options at any hour. The Carl's Jr./Hardee's breakfast menu contains multiple burger options, including the classic The Big Carl burger. In addition to more traditional breakfast sandwich options, you can also opt for The Breakfast Burger, an item that combines the best of both worlds.

Exactly as it sounds, The Breakfast Burger is a charbroiled patty topped with cheese, crispy bacon, an egg, and Hash Rounds. While you can get lunch at any time at Carl's Jr. or Hardee's, this item is only served during breakfast hours — until 10:30 a.m. at most locations. 

Steak 'n Shake isn't your traditional fast food establishment. With a diner-style emphasis on eating in, the fast food franchise still pumps out some of the fastest and most inexpensive burgers in the country, granted you can find a location near where you live. In recent years, the traditionally quick service restaurant is even transitioning to kisoks (via QSR magazine) and more standard fast food service options like drive-thrus to offset recent losses in dine-in profits. So yes, Steak 'n Shake is fast food, and more importantly, you can get a trademark Steakburger at any location at any time, even during breakfast hours. 

While Steak 'n Shake does not serve breakfast all day, you can get a burger and fries at any hour at the restaurant. Many locations throughout the U.S. are open 24 hours, seven days a week to boot. So if you are in the mood for a diner burger on a budget, Steak 'n Shake has got you covered from dawn till ... dawn the next day. 

Are sliders burgers? To avoid answering the age-old debate, we are just going to say that if you are craving an early morning breakfast burger, we can safely assume you will be content with a handful of White Castle sliders in its place. 

Not every White Castle is open 24 hours a day — many of them open around 9 a.m., and closing hours will vary from location to location — but they all offer two important things: all-day breakfast and all-day lunch. Like at Sonic, White Castle will make anything you want on the menu at any time of the day. This means you can get your slider craving filled even in the morning. It also means that breakfast items like the Belgian waffle slider are available all day long, if you have that dinner-for-breakfast craving instead. 

White Castle doesn't just serve lunch whenever, the long-lived fast food chain even has a breakfast burger on the menu. On its online menu, White Castle lists the Original Slider with Egg and Cheese as one of its breakfast options. However, this combination of lunch and breakfast doesn't appear to be currently available at every White Castle location. If this is truly what you're craving, you can always order an original slider and a Breakfast Slider and combine the two, since there are no rules about which items you can order when at the chain.