There’s a reason McDonald’s is testing all-day breakfast, Taco Bell is focused on a breakfast revolution and everyone from Jack-in-the-Box, to Dunkin’ Donuts, to Subway wants in on the game: breakfast means business. According to NPD, breakfast is still the industry’s fastest-growing daypart.
But it’s important to dig a little deeper to understand what – or in this case who – is really driving that growth. Hispanic consumers are. CREST data shows that while non-Hispanic breakfast visits grew 2% through the end of 2014, Hispanic visits grew five times that much (+10%) over the same period. Because their visits grew at a much faster pace, Hispanics contributed an astounding 58% of all the breakfast traffic growth last year. Hispanics now account for 21% of all breakfast traffic, overindexing their 17% share of population.
Part of this phenomenon is pure demographics. The Hispanic population is growing faster than non-Hispanics, so they are naturally contributing to spending increases across categories. Restaurants happens to be one of those categories that Hispanics just love to support. Our original QSR Landscape Study in partnership with Burke showed that Hispanics visit more often, with more people and order more items.
We’ll soon release the findings of our updated QSR study fielded earlier this year. Expect more on Hispanic key drivers/barriers to visitation, attribute importance and chain associations, along with awareness levels and loyalty scores. In the meantime, with one of every five breakfast visits coming from Hispanic consumers, it’ll be interesting to see how chains continue to engage with this valuable consumer to capture some of that phenomenal growth.
