Love McDonald’s All-Day Breakfast? Franchisees Reportedly Hate It

McDonald’s franchisees are groaning about making Big Macs and Egg McMuffins at the same time.

One week after McDonald’s launched its all-day breakfast menu on October 6, franchisees are lamenting that serving breakfast after 10:30 a.m. has been a nightmare, Business Insider reported. 

The major complaints are longer wait times, reduced spending per customer and chaos in the kitchen, the story said. It’s based on a Nomura survey of 29 U.S. franchisees with about 226 restaurants. Here are some responses:

“In small stores, the problems are vast with people falling over each other and equipment jammed in everywhere.”

“We are trading customers down from regular menu to lower-priced breakfast items.”

Others criticized the rising cost of hiring extra labor and purchasing expensive kitchen equipment in preparation for the new change. McDonald’s kitchens were originally built to supply breakfast and separately from other meals — now they’re forced to serve both at the same time. For example, operators now need to purchase additional grills to ensure that raw eggs don’t come in contact with burgers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The investment can range from $500 to $5,000 per restaurant depending on the location, a McDonald’s spokeswoman told the WSJ.

But with customers clamoring for all-day breakfast for years, it provides an opportunity for McDonald’s management to reverse the company’s streak of seven consecutive quarters with sales declines. The company had suffered significant erosion in its U.S. marketshare as new competitors (like Shake Shack) and new entrants in the breakfast market (like Starbucks and Taco Bell) expanded their businesses recently.

Breakfast currently accounts for about 25 percent of McDonald’s U.S. sales and extending it will likely to push that number to 29 percent initially, RBC Capital Markets analyst David Palmer told the WSJ.

Mike Andres, president of McDonald’s USA said to the WSJ that this is “the biggest strategic move the company has made since it rolled out its McCafe line” in 2009. So basically, have some patience, they’re working out the kinks.