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The Origins Of McDonald's Beloved Egg McMuffin And How It Changed Breakfast Sandwiches Forever

Tag：McDonald Breakfas 2025-03-11 18:02

The Origins Of McDonald

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These days there is no shortage of fast food breakfast sandwich options if you're hungry during your morning commute. Most national chains offer some sort of hand held dish that features eggs, cheese, and salty meat between slices of bread. However this might not be the case if McDonald's hadn't changed the game with its now famous Egg McMuffin.

To be clear, Mickey D's wasn't the first fast food restaurant to come up with a breakfast sandwich; that honor goes to Jack in the Box, which released its Breakfast Jack in 1969. But it was the Egg McMuffin that caught America's attention on a mass scale and encouraged other fast food eateries to enter the breakfast arena.

In 1971, Herb Peterson, a McDonald's franchisee in Santa Barbara came up with the idea of turning eggs Benedict into a sandwich. In fact, you can see this inspiration in the McMuffin even today: The sandwich features an egg and a slice of Canadian bacon on a toasted English muffin, all elements of eggs Benny. After discovering that producing large amounts of Hollandaise sauce was a problem, he instead added a slice of cheese to the Egg McMuffin. With McDonald's owner, Ray Kroc, on board, the company released the sandwich to test markets in 1972. By 1975, McDonald's restaurants all over the country were selling the breakfast sandwiches, to the delight of customers.

By the early 1980s, the rest of the fast food world had caught wind of the lucrative breakfast market, and many launched breakfast menus of their own.

Breakfast gets the fast food treatment

The Origins Of McDonald

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While McDonald's was working on releasing its Egg McMuffin in the early 1970s, Jack in the Box was already selling its Breakfast Jack (albeit without the same waves that the McMuffin made). This menu staple includes ham, an egg, and cheese on a toasted, buttered bun. And, unlike its competitor, Jack in the Box has always served breakfast all day long.

By 1983, Burger King entered the breakfast realm with its Croissan'wich, though the company's first attempt to start serving the most important meal of the day in 1979 was unsuccessful. Similarly, Wendy's first launched a breakfast menu in 1985, but canned the idea after only a few months. There were several more attempts over the years, but the company didn't find the mark until 2020. Taco Bell made its first attempt to enter the breakfast race much later, when it introduced its popular breakfast Crunchwraps (as well as many other items) in 2014.

While McDonald's may not have been the first fast food chain to enter the breakfast game, it's easy to see that these other huge fast food corporations attempting to break into the early morning market were following on the heels of the Egg McMuffin's success. (Though, surprisingly, some fast food chains still don't use whole real eggs.)

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