Break Fast for Morning Sales

Why do so many retailers miss out on the opportunity from sales early in the day? A recent “Business Insider” posting asks that question about Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs). McDonald’s expanded into breakfast sales, and now about 90% of those QSRs are open at 5 AM. Dunkin’ Donuts gained a reputation for excellent coffee and also augmented their early morning offerings with an Angus steak & egg sandwich. But after trying to succeed at this day-part, Wendy’s is putting breakfast on the back burner for now.
     The “Business Insider” analysis is that to succeed at morning sales, you have to get up early. It requires careful planning.
     As it happens, this applies to all sorts of retailers aside from QSRs. To motivate yourself to do the planning, recognize how early morning sales are more likely to add to profitability at other times of the day than to take away from it. Food retailers have learned that diners who just enjoyed a good breakfast at the restaurant in the early morning often would like to have the breakfast offerings also available at future lunchtimes. Forbes reports that about 40% of consumers eat on more than one occasion in the morning.
     Know the service expectations of your early morning prospects.

• People on their way to jobs want super-quick shopping. Bojangles chooses store locations which allow easy access as people are driving to work. You might not be able to do that with your store, and in fact might choose not to if your major business is from people coming by after work. But you can speed up service by offering a limited set of choices early in the day. 
• Another early morning target demographic consists of senior citizens, and they’re mostly happy to linger while shopping. Senior citizens tend to be more profitable customers when shopping early in the day, so feature merchandise then which attracts them to your store. Researchers at University of Michigan, Singapore Management University, and Ben-Gurion University found that their study participants, who were all at least sixty years old, were better able to analyze selling points in the morning than in the afternoon. For stores which let daylight enter, the morning brightness can help seniors tell the blues from the greens and the foregrounds from the backgrounds. But still favor merchandise which uses bold colors, along with large fonts and high contrast in the product packaging. 

Click below for more: 
Be All You Can Be with Day-Parts 
Help Seniors to Shop Early