American Breakfast Evolving To A Sandwich

At home, it is America's No. 1 breakfast choice, so is it any wonder there's a restaurant that serves only breakfast cereal?

At Cereality in downtown Chicago, the menu ranges from grown-up choices like Special K with strawberries to childhood favorites like Cap'n Crunch.

There, cereal's a meal on the go, but at many American homes it's a different story.

"It's hard to believe, but cereal is now not the contemporary view of what is convenient," Harry Balzer, who tracks what Americans eat for breakfast for the NPD market research firm, told CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers.

Balzer says that that 73 percent of Americans ate at home today, and that breakfast was probably coffee, cereal and juice. But breakfast in America is changing and so is the venue. The first clue to that change is cereal consumption, which is at a 10-year low.

"It's been slowly moving downward, much to the surprise of a lott of people, because it seems like it's still a very easy meal," he said. "And I'm sure that's what put it on the map."

When the United States first appeared on the map, breakfast wasn't so easy.

"Early breakfast in America was a hearty, heavy meal," said food historian and author Francine Segan. "They were spending so much time on their land working, especially early in the morning. And so they had to fortify themselves with a huge breakfast: Lots of meat, eggs, bacon, breads."

Now she says those foods are returning, but in the form of fast-food sandwiches.

All elements of the traditional English breakfast. Pancakes, which can be traced all the way back to Ancient Egypt, were George Washington's favorite.

"He loved hot cakes that were made with cornmeal, and he loved them topped with honey and butter," Segan said. "And then he'd wash it down with hard cider or even beer."

Morning drinking wasn't uncommon back in those days, but later, Abraham Lincoln went for simpler fare.

"He had the same breakfast almost every morning: One egg, one cup of coffee, not typical for his time period," Segan said.

By the end of the 19th century, those who'd had it with heavy breakfasts found relief in a novel form.

"Cereal totally started as a health movement, as a health food," Segan said. "It became an answer for illness, really, a cure for gout and other digestive problems."

Cereals by C.W. Post and Will Kellogg caught on fast and soon, Segan said, cereal became part of American pop culture. But now the consumption of this icon has declined slowly for much of the last 10 years, and the NPD Group's Harry Balzer thinks he knows why.

"It requires that you sit down," Balzer said. "It's hard to believe. But never bet against us on how much we're trying to make our lives easier."

Breakfast, says Balzer, has become the time-starved meal, and 12 percent of people skip it entirely. Is it the most important one of the day? It is for kids. Studies show children learn more and behave better on a full stomach. But for adults, the answer — like life itself — is more complicated. In the real world we grab breakfast where we can.

"In the past, it was 'get a quick meal inside the house,'" Balzer said. "But more and more, people are saying, 'Get a quick meal on the way to wherever we're heading,' whether it be work or school or somewhere else."

The number one casualty of this move outside the home: Toast. It had a 26 percent slice of American breakfast in 1985. Today that number has plummeted to 13 percent.

The breakfast appliance you're more likely to use today is your window opener. One in four of all meals bought at a restaurant in America today is purchased at a drive-thru window.

"The big change in our diet away from home is having the sandwich, this breakfast sandwich," Balzer said. "That's by far the single biggest change in the last 20 years away from home."

The restaurant that put that sandwich on the map is McDonald's – its Egg McMuffin is now 30 years old.

"What it did is it took breakfast and put it into your hand," McDonalds director of culinary innovation Daniel Coudreau said, "so that you were able to be on-the-go, which is a perfect model for what McDonalds is."

Eight million people eat breakfast every morning at McDonalds, giving it a 20 percent dominance of the out-of-home breakfast market.

"It's about a $6.5 billion-a-year business for McDonalds," Coudreau said. "And it's only growing."

Breakfast here is on the go, but with all the ingredients of a slower time. Take the pancake in their McGriddle sandwich.

"It's got the maple syrup actually baked into the bread, so that it allows you to have the experience of a pancake-egg-sausage breakfast, but handheld," Coudreau said. "So, that's the true innovation there."

Aiming to be one-stop shopping for the breakfast crowd, McDonalds recently introduced premium coffee to its menu, which Consumer Reports has rated better than Starbucks.

"We're extremely confident that our coffee goes head-to-head and surpasses a lot of our competition," Coudreau said.

Starbucks, not to be outdone, is rolling out its own line of breakfast sandwiches to take on McDonalds. Balzer says it's a sign of the times.

"Everybody in the restaurant business is looking at the breakfast market," he said. "If you find a place where there's some change, where there's some growth, you'll see lots of people running to it."

And so Burger King has lowered it prices. Subway has rolled out a breakfast omelet. And Dunkin' Donuts, which makes 6 million donuts a day, has also expanded its breakfast line (for the customer on the go).

"We talk about dashboard dining," Dunkin' Donuts' executive chef Stan Frankenthaler said. "So we know people are eating in their car all the time. How can we help them?"

Frankenthaler says the ingredients for today's breakfast starts with speed.

"You're in our shop, our goal is to serve you in 90 seconds," he said. "If you're going through the drive thru, 150 seconds to complete your order and get you back on your way."

And for products that work is that essential element of every car, the cup holder.

"Our new hash browns fit into a container that is designed to fit right in your cup holder," he said. "Fit it right in your cup holder, down the road you go."

Dunkin' Donuts newest weapon in the breakfast wars is a high-speed oven, more advanced than a microwave, that can cook and brown their Omelet Supreme in 40 seconds.

"The egg has browned," Frankenthaler said. "It's very 'homey.' That's flavor right there, that's browning, that carmelization."

With about 30 grams of fat, the Omelet Supreme, like most breakfast sandwiches, is hardly a bowl of Special K. But in the race of life, the trend is toward convenience.

"We're there to reach out and say, 'Okay, you're on the go. Here it is. It's ready, it's portable,'" Frankenthaler said. "It's what you once used to have on a Sunday morning. Now you can have it any day of the week."

As we rush through our modern lives at breakfast, we're ordering a bit of our past – to go.