Skip to footer

McDonald’s restaurants in Australia test ‘gourmet breakfast’

McDonald's restaurants in Australia are already testing all-day breakfast. Now, McDonald's Australia is stepping up its morning meal game with an upscale "Gourmet Breakfast" menu. 

|
Brendan McDermid/Reuters/File
Customers are seen through the door of a McDonald's in New York July 23, 2015. McDonald's restaurants in Australia are already testing all-day breakfast. Now, McDonald's Australia is stepping up its morning meal game with an upscale "Gourmet Breakfast" menu.

Already testing all-day breakfast, McDonald’s Australia operation—which developed the Create Your Taste platform, McCafé and other ideas now in the U.S.—is testing an upscale “Gourmet Breakfast” menu in at least one market, BurgerBusiness.com has learned.

All-day breakfast, launched July 2 in the Illawarra region south of Sydney and since spread to the Gold Coast region on the east coast, is more limited than the U.S. trial. Just six items from the regular breakfast menu—Bacon & Egg McMuffin, Sausage & Egg McMuffin, Sausage McMuffin, Hash Brown, Hotcakes and English Muffin (with honey, Vegemite or strawberry jam)—are being offered 24 hours a day. The U.S. test, which launched in April, includes nine breakfast items.

Gourmet Breakfast, testing in Annerley, a Brisbane suburb in Queensland, is a completely new morning menu, anchored by a “Café Breakfast” platter of toasted sourdough bread, bacon, two chipolata sausage (a small pork sausage) links, scrambled eggs, wilted spinach, grilled tomatoes, a hash brown patty and tomato relish.

Also on the menu are Belgian waffles with yogurt and fruit; a corn fritter platter with avocado, grilled tomatoes, crumbled feta cheese, tomato relish and spinach; a Bacon and Egg Roll (bacon, egg, spinach and tomato relish on a toasted brioche-style bun); and an Avocado Smash platter with toasted sourdough, mashed avocado, crumbled feta, spinach and sliced tomato.

Point-of-purchase merchandising says diners can customize Gourmet Breakfast items “at the kiosk,” presumably the same kiosk used for building Create Your Taste burgers.

McDonald’s Australia has long been interested in elevating perception of the brand through higher-end menu items. This has included an “M Selections” menu, tested in 2011, that included an Angus the Great and Grand Chicken burgers plus a NYC Benedict Bagel at breakfast, plus the Chicken Schnitzel & Citrus Mayo, Chicken Schnitzel & BBQ rolls and Angus & Egg Brekkie breakfast burger last year. Last December, McDonald’s opened The Corner, a healthy-foods café, in Sydney. Recent additions the The Corner’s menu have been a Mash & Lamb Winter Protein Box and a Lemon Lime & Bitters beverage. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to McDonald’s restaurants in Australia test ‘gourmet breakfast’
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2015/0731/McDonald-s-restaurants-in-Australia-test-gourmet-breakfast
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe