McDonald's expanding all-day breakfast test

McDonald's is ready to take its all-day breakfast experiment to Mississippi.

The scuffling fast-food giant announced on Thursday that after finding success this spring with its experiment of offering the McMuffin menu all day at 94 San Diego locations it is now prepared to try the all-day premise with biscuit sandwiches in an entirely different U.S. market.

The next iteration of the all-day breakfast menu comes on June 22 to 12 locations in Greenville and Greenwood, Miss. All but one of the restaurants make their biscuits from scratch.

Next month, McDonald's will take the all-day breakfast experiment to 132 locations in Nashville where biscuit sandwiches will also be made available all day, said Pam Williams, McDonald's marketing director.

"We're interested in getting our customer's perspectives from around the country," Williams told USA TODAY. "It should allow us to get a good understanding of our customers feelings and impressions of how this menu can work."

In addition to the biscuit sandwiches, the all-day menus will also include hotcakes, sausage burritos, hash browns, Fruit 'N Yogurt Parfait and Fruit & Maple Oatmeal

McDonald's is trying to work its way out of a two-year slump amid stiffening competition and changing American tastes.

There's also been tepid response from Wall Street to CEO Steve Easterbrook's plan to reshape the Oak Brook, Ill.-company into a "modern, progress burger company." The world's biggest hamburger chain sales dropped 0.3% globally last month compared with the same period last year.

But industry analysts seem upbeat about the all-day breakfast effort.

McDonald's had long known there was demand for breakfast items beyond 10:30 a.m. when restaurants traditionally end breakfast sales and turn to the lunch menu. Restaurant visits by U.S. consumers have been down for lunchtime and dinnertime in recent years, but visits at breakfast have been on the rise, according to the market research firm NPD.

The company, however, had long resisted expanding the availability of breakfast out of concern that restaurant operators just don't have enough grill space to do breakfast and lunch items simultaneously.

Williams said it it's still too early to predict whether the all-day breakfast menu will go nationwide. The company wouldn't offer data on the impact that offering breakfast all-day had on the San Diego locations, but Williams said it was well-received by customers there.

"We're hearing a lot of positive feedback from our customers and our operators," she said. "Many of their customers come in and specifically tell them, 'We've been waiting for this.' We believe that we have customers that are coming in that maybe haven't been visiting. They're also visiting more frequently — we're hearing that in the customer responses. But since this is a test, we are still evaluating all the information."