Should Pizza Chains Serve Breakfast?
Perhaps you saw the headlines this week when one bold nutritionist proclaimed pizza a healthier breakfast option than cereals. If the calorie counts are even, the thinking goes, then pizza contains more protein and less sugar, making it a marginally better—though not exactly healthy—breakfast choice. Missing the nuance entirely, the internet declared pizza slices its new favorite breakfast. For the record, I have nothing against pizza for breakfast, especially a slice cold from the fridge. But I'm also not under the illusion it's equivalent to a banana or chia pudding bowl.
Anyway, the pizza-for-breakfast headlines of course grabbed the attention of pizza marketing folks, who began asking: Should pizza restaurants try to grab an, ahem, slice of the breakfast market? A short piece on Pizza Marketplace poses the question of whether the news could set "a whole sector of the restaurant business afire" if pizza restaurants suddenly opened for breakfast, offered breakfast promotions, or otherwise tried to entice the morning crowd to their locations. Would customers want to hit Domino's for a morning slice and cup of coffee? Or bring a Pizza Hut pie to the office for the morning meeting in place of doughnuts? What's so different about a slice of pepperoni pizza (meat, carbs, cheese) compared to a fast-food breakfast sandwich (meat, carbs, cheese)?
The Takeout's stance has always been one of food libertarianism. Personally, I am not opposed to the breakfast pizza idea. But what the concept of pizza-for-breakfast deals miss is the fact that breakfast pizza is best cold, in this writer's opinion. Yes, breakfast pizzas topped with eggs and sausage are delicious straight from the oven (see my coworker Gwen Ihnat's creation above) but when I hear "pizza for breakfast," I think first of my slightly hungover self, still pajama-clad, grabbing a slice out of the cardboard box in the fridge while waiting for coffee to brew. In that situation, going out in public is the last thing I'm looking for. That's why I'm eating pizza out of the fridge in my bunny slippers in the first place, right?