It’s no trick: McDonald’s may have all-day breakfast by Halloween

Egg McMuffins anytime may be available nationwide this fall.

Various reports say an internal McDonald’s (MCD) memo tells franchisees the fast-food giant could begin offering breakfast all-day throughout the U.S. as soon as October.

McDonald’s started test-marketing the idea in San Diego back in April and has added other locations since. The memo is said to call the response by customers “encouraging.”

When reached by Yahoo Finance, McDonald's wouldn't confirm the story, giving us this statement:

“Serving all-day breakfast is likely the number one request we hear from McDonald’s customers. We’re testing it out in a few markets to learn more about this possibility. We know your mouth is watering, but there’s no news on this yet.”

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli notes critics have been asking what’s taking McDonald’s so long to do this, but it’s not that easy to turn such a massive operation.

“Obviously there were some logistical issues,” he explains. “It wasn’t as if McDonald’s was saying ‘No, we don’t want you eating Egg McMuffins at noon,’ it was about them trying to service their lunch and dinner business. I feel like they now recognize it’s something that can play over the course of a day and operationally they can just make it work.”

Santoli says the idea of offering breakfast all day fits with the style of new CEO Steve Easterbrook, who’s been trying to revive slumping sales, which have fallen for 12 consecutive months.

“I think it reflects this spirit of experimentation, trying new things, taking new measures that are going to please their customers and having them come back... more than sticking rigidly to whatever their conception of the menu is,” he says.

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Santoli believes Easterbrook and his team will keep throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks.

“They’ll probably constantly try to streamline this menu and look for areas where they can stand out as seeming like something other than the same old, industrial-style food,” he explains. “There are criticisms they emphasize coffee service too much, trying to be like Starbucks (SBUX), is that something they can reallocate resources away from, maybe simplify the whole drive-thru process? All those things I know are on the table, it’s just unclear how fast they can move and whether they all can move the needle.”

McDonald’s releases its second quarter earnings report before the bell Thursday. And Santoli thinks he knows what topics Easterbrook will be addressing.

“I definitely feel he is going to try to handicap how things look on the comp store sales side in the U.S.,” he says. “And China - Yum (YUM) had a really bad quarter in China, and we don’t really know if that’s specific to them or it’s something about demand and the supply channel there.”

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