Little Lessons Learned about the Fast Breakfast Scene in Spokane Valley

I am becoming a bit of an expert when it comes to fastfood breakfast in the Spokane Valley because I have recently developed the habit of going out for a cup of coffee, a bite to eat and to read the morning paper. I’ve done the King, the Box, the Sub and of course all four Macs in Spokane Valley. After a couple of months of breakfast hopping, I have landed upon a dominant personal favorite. In the process, I learned a few things about Spokane Valley’s early morning mobil eating habits that you could only learn, as I did,  by frequenting the ffbf places which I  can assure you not many people do. At least they do not unless they are in their cars.

That was the first thing I discovered as I became familiar with ffbf scene here in Spokane Valley. Nobody comes in and has a bite to eat for breakfast. I have sat and ate my breakfast,drank my coffee and read the paper many times and not had one other person do the same the entire time I was there. I was the only person in the joint.

So what keeps them open for breakfast?  They all do a bang up drive-thru business.  That was the second interesting  thing of little value that I learned in the early hours  in the fast food breakfast scene in our corner of the world. A lot of people eat their breakfast on the fly by way of the drive thru. Think about all of the places you can dash thru and get breakfast or at the very least get a latte. It amazed me at first how empty the restaurants were as I sat and watched a steady stream of drive thruers go by just outside the window.

The most interesting thing I discovered as I open-mindedly tried nearly all the ffbf joints  was that McDonald’s pretty much kicks everybody else’s butt every which way. Jack, the King and Carl all have a surprising steady trickle going through their “thrus.” McDonald’s literally has them waiting in line.

On top of that, McDonald’s is the only one that gets a few people inside to eat. The McDonalds are never heaving but they are never empty which is the only way all the other places ever are. I really am not sure why beyond free coffee refills and new remodelling at two of them. I know I go to them loyally now because they are the only fast food breakfast place that offer Wi-Fi. I find that goofy. But maybe they are onto something because in all the times I have been to McDonald’s, I have never seen anyone on their laptop but myself.

The last thing I’ll mention concerning breakfast lessons I have learned has to do with the food these places are putting out. McDonald’s invented the genre and they remain the team to beat with their biscuits like my granny made and their hotcakes that every one of my kids ate like, well, hotcakes.

But the truth is that they all put out a lot of tasty if not healthy selections for breakfast. I love the french toast sticks at the King and the breakfast bowls at the Box.  I kind of gather that they all understand that  the consumer just wants something reasonably tasty to toss down the tummy as they drive to work or read the paper.