Wendy’s Is About To Beat Out Burger King In A Big Way
Breakfast is bigger than ever at Wendy's and Burger King has reason to worry.
This article is more than 2 years old
Fast-food giants Wendy’s and Burger King both have prominent presences in the United States. Each entity is unmistakably known for its burgers and fries and each has garnered its own respectable reputation and loyal food fan base. However, Wendy’s is now giving Burger King a big run for its money in one key area that the fast-food behemoth might not have seen coming. CNBC reported that after years of failed attempts, Wendy’s breakfast menu has taken off. It has done so well, in fact, that it is about to surpass Burger King’s breakfast sales. Wendy’s says move aside French toast sticks, the Breakfast Baconator is about to rule the roost.
Wendy’s launched their most recent breakfast menu in 2020 just two weeks shy of nationwide pandemic-related lockdowns. Looking from a lens back then, one might have thought that they should have just cut their losses and stuck to their best-selling food staples instead of dabbling in an uncertain new endeavor during such unprecedented times. However, Wendy’s decided to follow through on its breakfast business model. And its determination paid off in a big way.
In 2021 Wendy’s breakfast sales grew by an impressive 25% margin. Which allowed them to slide into the number three breakfast spot amongst all breakfast-serving domestic food chains. Its current number three position has them placed just behind Burger King in terms of their breakfast performance. And Burger King should be worried. “For us, right now, we’re very solidly and very quickly established as the number three, but we’re only about a share point behind Burger King,” said Wendy’s US President Kurt Kane.
Wendy’s is gearing up to blow right past Burger King with their growing breakfast sales. In 2022, sales from their breakfast menu are projected to continue to expand by as much as 20%. Overall, even outside of its breakfast revenue, Wendy’s growth metrics are superior to Burger King’s lackluster ones. All of this has Kurt Kane confident that Wendy’s is going to “leave them behind…in the not-too-distant future.”
Kane’s ambitions are not ending with Burger King, either. Kane’s hope is that the company will eventually reach a position where it will be able to overtake the great super-star of fast-food breakfast – McDonald’s. Although, he does remain realistic that, that is not likely to happen as rapidly as its take over of Burger King. “We think the Frozen Arches have had plenty of time at the top of the breakfast category, but I think we’ll obviously keep nipping away at that and gobbling up share across the rest of the category,” said Kane.
Ironically, a lot of Wendy’s new breakfast success can be attributed to the odd circumstances that were created because of the pandemic, as well as the fact that many of those breakfast plans aligned seamlessly with those odd circumstances. One example, for instance, is at the initial launch Wendy’s had only planned on offering their breakfast items as drive-thru order options. This worked out really well when the pandemic forced in-person dining to cease and all one could do was order via the drive-thru. “Even though it wasn’t the way that we would’ve drawn up the playbook, it may have actually helped us because it gave us the opportunity to really build it in a steady way,” said Kane. Sometimes the best things in life happen in the ways you least expect, and that sentiment, albeit cliché, even holds true for a fast-food titan like Wendy’s.
