Breakfast ends at 10:30 around here. Which is why I stop at Subway to pick up lunch on the way to work, and it’s generally better food too.
“OK, people. Time to switch. No more flipping the eggs. Time to flip the meat.”
About two seconds.
That’s not how it works at all. You have to clean the grills and change the temps. You can’t just starting throwing burgers on. You also have to change the stock on the line (you have to carry the eggs and sausage patties back and load the freezers with burgers).
Everything is very systematic and precise. Exact grill temps, coatings and cooking times. It’s not like a short order grill at a truck stop. It’s basically machine work, and the machinery has to be reset according to product.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
All the breakfast supplies (like the eggs) have to be put back in the cooler, and the lunch supplies (like the meat) have to be brought out. Same for all the other supplies – even down to changing the take-out boxes. Then everything is cleaned, especially the grills – you can’t sell burgers that taste of pancakes or eggs. Then the grills are re-greased, and brought back up to cooking temp (which is different for burgers than for eggs & pancakes). The signs, especially the big sign over the counter with the pictures of items has to be changed. If the store has the older types of cash registers, they have to be switched from the breakfast menu program to the lunch menu one. And a whole lot more. Plus there’s typically a shift change about this time.
If you think all that can be done in 2 seconds, you are misinformed!
Too bad Diogenes & t-bonham weren’t working the fast food joint in Falling Down. They might not have pissed off Michael Douglas so much had they been there to explain why he couldn’t have his Whammy Burger breakfast. 
I worked at McDonald’s when I was in high school and college, and Diogenes and t-bonham have it correct. Unless the restaurant is specifically set up to run breakfast and lunch at the same time (and personally I’ve never run into a McDonald’s that is set up this way) then switching from breakfast to lunch is kind of a major operation, and once it’s done, you can’t just “make a quick McMuffin” or whatever.
Incidentally, the very first time I engaged in a flame war on the Internet was in a Usenet discussion on this topic, in probably 1995 or so. Good times.
Actually I describe one above, that I worked at. It was a corporate store, as were most of the others that I worked at, with similar layouts (we always went to the other stores as subs when they had team events and such). The only reason they didn’t serve breakfast and lunch 24 hours was because they didn’t want to. A full half of the kitchen was unused. Plenty of space.
Again, it comes down to profitability. If it were profitable, they’d make it happen.
Right, I mentioned that I hadn’t personally run into one just to make the point that in my experience they are rare; I did see your post above.
I will tell you that as an employee, I wished that they would have made both breakfast and lunch all day, because it got really old listening to people bitch because they wanted an Egg McMuffin at 11:00 am (or a Big Mac at 10:00 am) and couldn’t have one.
Running two separate lines simultaneously like that would also require twice as many emplyees to run them. Even if a store has the space, and the equipment, it’s unlikely that the demand would be enough to even cover the extra payroll, much less make a profit.
Actually it would be an interesting industrial engineering study. Offhand I suspect that one wouldn’t need double the employees, because I suspect that during the breakfast hours the demand for the normal menu is decreased, and that during the lunch/dinner/fourth-meal hours, demand for the breakfast menu is decreased. Because labor should be 100% utilized, I can’t see that one would actually need to double the headcount.
I’m also not willing to buy a McDonald’s franchise solely to determine whether I can make a profit 24 hours on the full menu. 
Labor is already 100% utilized on those lines. They break people as soon as they can. Everything is already engineered for minimum payroll as it is.
Yes, but you suggested that they’d have to “double” the headcount; that’s a 100% increase in headcount, to contribute to an unknown-but-likely-lower than 100% volume of the off-hour menu.
And I’d conjecture that existing personnel aren’t 100% occupied during non-rush times, where 100% occupation means “direct labor” or labor that contributes directly toward assembly of the product.
Yes, and this creates another profit-stealing factor: McDonalds meals are not cooked to order. Rather the burgers are grilled in batches, assembled, and then placed in the warming trays until sold. At busy times they may sell immediately. At slower times, they may sit in the warmer for a few minutes. But to maintain quality, there are strict limits on how long they may sit in the warmer – after that they are thrown out. (Look during a slow time, and you will see little plastic markers in the warmer tray, marking when items were made.)
So having the lunch menu available at breakfast time requires them to have lunch items ready in the warmer tray, but the low demand means they will often be throwing stale ones out and refilling the tray with fresh items (that then sit there until they are stale & thrown out in turn). And if they don’t keep lunch items ready in the warmer, then when one is ordered it will take excessively long to prepare it, thus falling below the McDonalds standards for delivery time.
Either way, it costs them extra to do this, without any significant gain in sales. Not gonna happen!
Just read this article today: this woman really, REALLY wanted lunch at breakfast.
While I would love breakfast all day, I don’t think my love of McMuffins goes quite as deep as her passion for the nugs.
We stop serving breakfast at 10:30
The one thing that always bothered me about the Mc Donald’s that I worked at was that we had four grills, but only two were in operation at any given time, 3-4 of the grills for “hamburger wednesday” dinner rush, and the back two were only ever started out on breakfast service, turned off and rotated out into lunch service. We had 4 grills but only two were ever really in operation. Seemed really wasteful, if we were really looking to turn the worm we would have all of our pistons running at full speed. Bad tech to profitability ratio.
Just to clarify, the meat is already cooked (and they don’t have tabs, there are actual timers now ), but the sandwiches are assembled to order.
Not sure the last time you worked at mcdonalds, but there are now more items cooked on the grill (Angus, chicken, and occasionally the Mcrib) so the grills are used more now.
One thing I know is that Mickey D’s isn’t leaving any profit on the table. Every decision they make is intended to maximize the bottom line. If they could make more money by running a breakfast line full time, they would do it.
Well, this was around twenty years ago, but I cooked McRibs, and 1/4 pounders (Angus) on the same grills… a real grill- not clamshells… still only used one out of the four grills. Didn’t grill our chicken… it all came vacuum packed and pre-cooked/grilled. If you could enlighten me, what modern item on the McDonald’s menu is made with flattop chicken? I’m afraid I have never eaten such.
Watch out you don’t get a case of McNugget Rage.