Hypothesis

upcoming years. As a result of the focus on full-service breakfast chains, the heart of the report is an exploration of family/midscale offerings. Attitudes toward brunch are likewise covered in the proprietary consumer research.

This examination brings up an interesting conundrum--breakfast sales are rising rapidly, yet family/midscale chains show the slowest growth of any restaurant sector. This finding suggests that brand repositioning may be necessary for family/midscale operations to better capitalize on general growth in breakfast sales.

Working with the hypothesis that family/midscale marketing needs to shift from product-specific promotions to experience-based campaigns, party composition data from the Simmons NCS survey results is used. An exhaustive proprietary survey on breakfast attitudes has also been commissioned. To provide potential for rethinking strategies in operations and marketing, this report explores the breakfast food and dining preferences of 1,100+ respondents who have dined out for breakfast in the last month at a full-service restaurant, and who average more than 3.5 full-service breakfasts and brunches out per month.

Demographic differences in attitudes are explored on the basis of age, gender,