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Burger King $1 menu escalates breakfast war

The burger wars may be spreading to breakfast.

Burger King on Monday will debut a dollar value breakfast menu, including the “Hamlette,” a new ham and egg sandwich designed to compete with the Egg McMuffin and siphon morning traffic away from Oak Brook-based McDonald’s Corp.

The menu will also include Cheesy Tots, melted mozzarella and cheddar cheese in a potato crust, as well as french toast sticks, a sausage biscuit, small hash browns, Cini-Minis, a small BK Joe coffee, white or chocolate milk, 16-ounce soft drink and orange juice.

But breakfast is a business McDonald’s isn’t likely to give up easily. The morning meal accounts for 29 percent of the chain’s sales, so any change quickly affects the margins of its company-owned and franchisee-operated stores.

John Schaufelberger, Burger King’s vice president of product marketing and innovation, said he expects price competition will help the chain gain share.

Breakfast is “a key day part for us. We are very proud we are first to market with this [value menu],” he said. “We went out, tested the [value menu] proposition and proved the case. There certainly is a consumer out there that is looking for this.”

It’s a part of the day that Burger King has been increasingly focusing on. Last year the chain, which operates about 9,000 restaurants in the U.S., rolled out a super-premium coffee, dubbed BK Joe, designed to compete with Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s richer coffee, launched last year.

Competition in the segment, which is viewed to have growth potential because fewer people currently eat the meal outside the home, is only going to get tougher. Last month Starbucks said it would make its hot breakfast sandwiches available at its drive-through operations, not just at walk-in restaurants, and there has been speculation that McDonald’s would try offering breakfast items all day if it can work out operational hurdles.

But don’t look for the Golden Arches to strike back with its own breakfast dollar menu–at least not right away.

Corporate is not ordering up a breakfast dollar menu or marketing program at this point, but local advertising cooperatives may channel some money there. In the Chicago market many restaurants last week were offering two breakfast sandwiches for $3, for example.

“Our co-ops have an opportunity to add four different items to the dollar menu and some choose to do that through breakfast, although that’s not a national program,” Jim Skinner, McDonald’s chief executive, said last month.

A spokesman said the company is not planning any marketing program, such as reduced prices, to combat the Burger King rollout.

But Skinner made clear that the world’s largest hamburger chain is not going to sit by idly while Burger King takes customers with a dollar menu.

“Relative to breakfast, we are the clear leader,” he said. “We have a lot of equity in that space.

We are very, very proud of our breakfast offerings and we think that we are unparalleled in our delivery of breakfast and we continue to work to protect that,” he said.

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jschmeltzer@tribune.com