The Fast-Food Breakfast Battle

In the world of fast-food restaurants, there is currently an epic war being waged on the breakfast battlefield. Since the release of their breakfast menu in early 2014, Taco Bell has being going head-to-head with long-standing breakfast champion, McDonalds, for the public’s breakfast dollar (Malcom & Whitehouse, 2016).

Since the advent of their breakfast campaign, Taco Bell has directly attacked McDonalds, releasing ads like “Ronald McDonald loves Taco Bell Breakfast,” which featured dozens of men named Ronald McDonald eating their infamous Waffle Taco, and “Breakfast Defectors,” which showed people trapped in a land of “circle food” controlled by very ‘Ronald McDonald’ -esque troops (Morrison, 2014).

While Taco Bell has been successful in boosting revenues by joining the previously untapped breakfast sector, they have yet to overtake McDonald’s popularity or sales rates (Munarriz, 2016).

The most recent development in the continuing battle for breakfast greatness has come today with Taco Bell’s announcement of the $1 Breakfast Menu. This new value menu will feature 10 $1 items, several of which include bacon, something not available on McDonalds’ value menu. 

The press release released by Taco Bell today, in their signature tongue-in-cheek style states, “TACO BELL® REVEALS AMERICAN CONSUMERS WOULD RATHER PAY $1 VS. MORE THAN $1,**” claiming that this recent research coincidently coincides with the release of the $1 Morning Value menu.

While this is obviously not true, the survey results included in the press release are – and they were collected using a relatively new social media app to the business world, Wishbone, a crowd-sourcing app that allows people to vote between two (or more) pictures to help users make decisions. Although Taco Bell is a company known for its social media interaction, this marks Taco Bell’s first foray into the Wishbone marketing world, and they announced that they plan to use it much more in the future (Taco Bell, 2016).

With this latest, albeit delicious, attack from Taco Bell, it will be interesting to see if McDonalds breakfast revenue or number 1 status is affected at all. Personally, I think it is going to take a lot more than some $1 menu items to topple the champion, but it remains to be seen.

Do you think Taco Bell’s attacking tactics are going to be effective in the long run? What moves can they make next to try to stay ahead in the breakfast game?

References:

Malcom, H. & Whitehouse, K. (2016). Taco Bell’s $1 menu heats up breakfast Battle. USA Today. Retrieved from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/10/tace-bell-announced-1-breakfast-menu/81574282/

Morrison, M. (2014). Taco Bell’s breakfast endorser: Ronald McDonald. AdAge. Retrieved from: http://adage.com/article/news/taco-bell-enlists-army-ronald-mcdonalds-breakfast-ads/292337/

Munarriz, R. (2016). Taco Bell bucks breakfast; Is McDonald’s worried? The Motley Fool. Retrieved from: http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2016/03/10/taco-bell-bucks-breakfast-is-mcdonalds-worried.aspx

Taco Bell. (2016). TACO BELL® REVEALS AMERICAN CONSUMERS WOULD RATHER PAY $1 VS. MORE THAN $1** [Press Release]. Retrieved from: https://www.tacobell.com/news/american-consumers-would-rather-pay-less