29, it will enter a city home to a number of breakfast and brunch options - including close-in-proximity places such as Lucile’s Creole Cafe, The Buff restaurant and Dot’s Diner - featuring their own devoted diners.
Snooze’s Schlegel knows that when his business’ newest restaurant opens at 1617 Pearl St. In five years, Snooze’s four locations around the Denver metro area have gained an ardent customer base that endures sometimes lengthy wait-times for a taste of the retro-chic diner with a modern-day fare focused on natural, farm-raised and local ingredients. “They’re very loyal to their breakfast choice it’s become a habit.” “It’s very difficult to move a regular breakfast customer from his or her breakfast place,” Imbergamo said. The new arrivals not only faced competition from a rush of similarly positioned fledgling concepts, but also from the well-entrenched eateries. Those two chains “grew like gangbusters” for about six or seven years and faded relatively quickly, Imbergamo said. “This all reminds me of the late ’70s and ’80s when we had this proliferation of essentially the same thing.”Īt that time, places such as Eggshell and Le Peep nudged their way into the territory dominated by hash houses and greasy spoons. “While they’re serving bacon and eggs, they are also serving pineapple upside down pancakes and all kinds of other very interesting and different breakfast menu items. “They’re all kind of hip and generally unique … most of them have very high-style build-outs,” said John Imbergamo, a Denver-based restaurant consultant who works with established eateries such as Racine’s. Snooze - with its “Happy Days meets the Jetsons” décor and its twists on morning staples - embodies much of the qualities of the next-generation breakfast restaurants that have cropped up during the past five years. Monnette made note of Orange, a Chicago-based breakfast restaurant, that serves French toast kabobs and “Frushi,” or fruit and other items plated like sushi. However, even though people still want their pancakes or omelette, they give unique restaurants room to experiment with these items.” “Breakfast has been a very traditional meal with less innovation than other dayparts. “I believe that what makes these places unique is that they take classic breakfast items and put unique twists on them to create something that is a craveable comfort food, but also gives the consumer the sense that they cannot make it at home,” Monnette wrote in an e-mail to the Camera. Riehle projected that the breakfast trends should persist as further employment gains - albeit slight - are expected to continue.Īs customer traffic remains strong, it could result in operators taking more distinct approaches to breakfast, said Sara Monnette, director of consumer research for Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based foodservice research and consulting firm. The gains have spread across the breakfast sector - from the dominant to-go giants of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks to the independent sit-down restaurants, he said. “Basically, breakfast has become a more important meal for the restaurant industry for the last several years,” Riehle said. Separately, there is a direct correlation between increasing breakfast sales and increasing employment, he said, adding that even minimal employment upticks have been enough to bolster the “dayparts” sector. Nationally, breakfast has boomed during recent years primarily because of economic shifts, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.įor the consumer, breakfast meals have the lowest average check per person - a welcome lower-priced expenditure for cash-strapped families that still want to go out and eat - and for operators it carries high margins, he said.
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