An Insider’s Guide to the History of McDonald’s Breakfast

If you’re one of the many who look forward to a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich on the way to work or to jump-start your engine before a long road trip, you’re part of a long tradition out of the Golden Arches. McDonald’s has been serving up this most important meal of the day for 50 years. To get a little background on McDonald’s breakfast history, we asked McDonald’s archivist Mike Bullington to share some background on this morning meal, made the McDonald’s way.

Though you may think of iced coffees and McGriddles for McDonald’s breakfast, it certainly didn’t start that way. Over the last 50 years, McDonald’s breakfast has evolved to become a major part of the chain’s operation, helping set a standard for fast food competition. From breakfast promotions to bringing back a favorite sandwich, McDonald’s is marking the Egg McMuffin’s golden anniversary by making its breakfast more memorable than ever, even partnering with Krispy Kreme in some major cities.

If you’re more accustomed to savory breakfasts, it might seem unlike McDonald’s breakfast to offer donuts, but the golden anniversary isn’t the only time in the chain’s history when donuts were part of the menu. In fact, donuts and McDonald’s go way back, as some of the first breakfast options. Mike Bullington, McDonald’s archivist, said, “In 1970, a franchisee [Jim Delligatti] received permission to sell doughnuts and sweet rolls in his restaurants. He later added pancakes and sausage to the menu in 1971.”

Doughnuts and other sweets aren’t the only things Delligatti brought to the menu. He also created the Big Mac a few years earlier in 1967, bringing the super big burger to his locations outside of Pittsburgh. Opening his first McDonald’s in 1957, though he had a nice collection of about a dozen restaurants, there was fierce competition with other big burger giants, drawing Delligatti to add a bigger burger to the menu. Thus, the Big Mac was born.

McDonald’s also once had cinnamon rolls that were perfectly oozy and gooey. They were easy to love, but, depending on your location, they’ve been gone for some time. Today, there are a few more sweet options on the menu with pancakes, and even sweeter breading for sandwiches, like with the McGriddles. Even still, the majority of the menu focuses on McDonald’s very own spin on breakfast with unique breakfast sandwiches, created by yet another franchisee.

Relatively new franchisee Herb Peterson opened his first location in 1968, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d come up with the Egg McMuffin. Golden Arches archivist Mike Bullington explains, “Around that same time, franchisee Herb Peterson invented the Egg McMuffin and began serving it in his restaurants. It went nationwide a few years later in 1975.” That is, in the same general time that Jim Delligatti was bringing sweet breakfast treats to his location, Peterson brought us the Egg McMuffin.

Like many of our favorite McDonald’s offerings, (Filet-O-Fish and the Big Mac, for example) the sandwich all started as an idea. Peterson’s son, David Peterson, recalls the creation of the Egg McMuffin: He watched his dad working on the invention in the kitchen, where he would use the first molded “egg ring” that perfected the round egg for what would become an iconic sandwich. Upon taking it to Ray Kroc, the sandwich got the go-ahead to make the Egg McMuffin the very first breakfast item in 1972 at limited locations as a test item, though there’s some contention over which location was the first to offer the Egg McMuffin (with several locations claiming the title), David says that Goleta, Pennsylvania’s location at 146 South Fairview was the true first location.

Herb Peterson’s favorite breakfast was a favorite of many, and as McDonald’s archivist Mike Bullington explains, “When the Egg McMuffin launched nationwide, the goal was to put a diner classic — Eggs Benedict — in the palm of people’s hands. The mission was simple: to provide a quick, delicious, and convenient breakfast option for our customers.” McDonald’s had the goal of creating something of a ritual that people could integrate into their lives while away from home.

While Eggs Benedict was the inspiration, the contents of an Egg McMuffin are notably different from the classic Eggs Benedict with English muffin, Canadian bacon, egg, and hollandaise sauce. We’re willing to bet that if McDonald’s could somehow integrate the hollandaise into the mix, it may just sell even more sandwiches to Eggs Benedict lovers. We imagine that this might be challenging to include, and is likely the reason we have a slice of cheese rather than a sauce that would most definitely struggle to keep the sandwich as one cohesive item.

Fast food mornings changed forever in the late ’70s with the introduction of the first fast food breakfast items. “In 1977, McDonald’s officially added a breakfast line to its national menu featuring the Egg McMuffin, hotcakes and sausage, toasted English muffin, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and Danish,” Mike Bullington, archivist, explains. Though the Egg Muffin would have hit restaurants earlier, it was 1977 when a complete line of food was introduced.

The advertising campaign billed it as a way to slow down and enjoy your morning since McDonald’s could take care of the breakfast. An early television commercial features customers in booths enjoying their breakfast with a newspaper and family. The ad pays special attention to the Egg McMuffin, which it calls “McDonald’s own original, very delicious, breakfast sandwich.” At the end, the slogan, “We do it all for you,” drives home the message. Of course, today, many breakfasts will be served at a drive-through window while people hustle their way to work. So, it does make mornings easier, but perhaps not in such a luxurious way as it once did.

It’s always fun to look at times gone by and compare price differences. In 1973, the price of the Egg McMuffin was $.63, a little less than its national premiere in 1977. Archivist Mike Bullington says, “When it was released nationwide in 1975, the Egg McMuffin was priced around 80 cents.” The same year, you could get a gallon of milk for $1.57, gas for just over half a dollar, a stamp for 10 cents, and even a new car for an average of $4,951.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 80 cents in January 1975 has roughly the same buying power as $4.88 in January 2025. However, at the time of writing, the Egg McMuffin is selling for $4.08. Of course, we’ve seen a fair amount of variance from location to location, so your experience might be a little more or less. Given how expensive some breakfast ingredients have become, especially since it uses freshly cracked eggs, the price is impressively low.

To celebrate the Egg McMuffin and all it has done for McDonald’s breakfast, on Sunday, March 2, McDonald’s sold these breakfast sandwiches for $1 when ordered through the app. It might not have been the original price, but for celebrating 50 years with this popular breakfast item, the deal can’t be beat.

Birdie the Early Bird was the McDonaldland character for breakfast meals. She’s a bird with braided pigtails and golden coloring, somewhat reminiscent of a baby chick. She also has pink overalls and a white flight scarf with flight goggles to complete the ensemble.

In her featured commercials, Birdie is seen learning to fly, enjoying breakfast with other McDonaldland characters, and generally living life in the oddness that was McDonaldland. Birdie remained in the fold until the 2000s, when most of the rest of the characters were seen less and less. Now, Birdie and her friends only make the rarest of appearances.

With the success of Grimace and his birthday shakes all over social media, perhaps we’ll be seeing more of Birdie and her pals, and Minecraft toys may be the start of her grand comeback. In a partnership with Minecraft marketing, seemingly mostly in the Happy Meal toy world, Birdie appears once more, but this time, Minecraft-afied.

In 1986, McDonald’s released biscuit sandwiches which, according to the accompanying advertising campaign, were made fresh in store. To find out if the biscuits in your store are made fresh each day, you may need to ask, as it seems there’s variance between different locations.

And 2003 brought the birth of a whole new type of breakfast bread: pancake patties with syrup baked right in. The McGriddles have remained a staple of the breakfast menu, treated much the same as muffins or biscuits, often including the same egg and cheese with sausage or bacon fillings. Marketed as “bizarre,” it’s one of those foods that sounds strange until you bite into it.

Time will tell what kind of breakfast offerings McDonald’s will share in the future. We’re hoping for a few chances at sample international breakfast offerings so we can try them without boarding a plane.

We love an Egg McMuffin, but bagel breakfast sandwiches are where it’s at. Although they weren’t available in every corner of the United States until February 2025, when McDonald’s revealed that you can now enjoy bagel sandwiches coast to coast. To those who once loved this bagel breakfast, only to see it disappear in 2020, it’s a welcome return to pre-COVID times.

If you’re new to the breakfast bagel world, we recommend going all the way and diving right in with the best: a steak, egg, & cheese bagel sandwich. It’s warm and gooey in all the right places, greasy enough for the perfect hangover food, and satisfying enough to hold you to a late lunch. The egg is a folded scrambled egg, so the yolk won’t be the culprit that gets you messy, but the grease might, so be sure to get napkins.

As of now, there is no breakfast Happy Meal. Why? Well, according to a McDonald’s representative Mike Bullington, the reasoning has everything to do with the way families operate around breakfast time: “We know that breakfast is often a special occasion for families … there are not currently any plans for a breakfast Happy Meal.” Essentially, families are either rushing out the door or enjoying a meal at home together before starting the day. Getting to a McDonald’s to enjoy a meal together may be challenging. However, McDonald’s has tested breakfast Happy Meals in the past.

In September of 2016, 73 stores throughout the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region were lucky enough to try out breakfast-style Happy Meals. The meals came in two varieties: egg and cheese flavored McMuffin (without meat) or some McGriddles cakes that are basically thick syrup-flavored pancakes. Meals also came with a side of yogurt, hash brown patty, or apple slices.

Since these meals never made it out of Tulsa, it’s safe to say they weren’t as popular as expected. Admittedly, it would be challenging to choose breakfast for the age range when a Happy Meal is most ideal, but it’s also a perfect space to introduce new foods.

The golden anniversary is also celebrating an impressive accomplishment from a sourcing standpoint. McDonald’s locations in the U.S. now use eggs that come from a cage-free environment. This has been a goal for the chain since 2015, and it was completed two years earlier than originally anticipated.

When eggs are labeled as cage-free as opposed to conventional eggs, it means those eggs came from chickens that enjoy more indoor living space. You may imagine the cage-free aspect means they’re living outside, but this isn’t the case. That would be pasture-raised eggs where the birds get to roam about on pasture. In a cage-free environment, the chickens can still live in large flocks, and it’s more communal than the caged life. Conventional eggs, on the other hand (or those without any indication of how the birds were raised) likely come from farms that house chickens in small cages with little living space.

One of the best parts about traveling is enjoying different cuisine; finding the best eateries that locals swear by. You may think that McDonald’s doesn’t have a role in such a search, but look again. Mike Bullington, McDonald’s archivist, shares, “Regional breakfast offerings are all about tapping into the unique passions of our local communities — like the McChicken Biscuit in Houston, Atlanta, and Memphis; Biscuits & Sausage Gravy in places like Louisville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati; and the Deluxe Breakfast Platter in Los Angeles. In Hawaii, some locations even feature SPAM on their menu and serve Hawaiian Sausage Portuguese Rice.”

Of course, the hardest part about breakfast will always be moving quickly enough — but not too quickly — to actually enjoy breakfast. When on vacation, it’s perhaps even harder. So, while you may not get the opportunity to sample the SPAM in Hawaii before catching the waves and relaxing on the beach, it’s still nice to know that Hawaiians enjoy it on the regular, right at home. Regional favorites don’t need to be as unique as some of these offerings. In fact, the bagel sandwiches would have been considered a regional item before it hit the big time and spread across the country.

If you thought traveling within the United States offered interesting options, the international flavors bring a whole new side to the menu that will have you wishing for easy access to international travel. McDonald’s archivist, Mike Bullington, says, “It’s amazing how local cultures and cuisines can add a unique twist to our breakfast menu. We’re all about embracing local tastes to make dining more authentic for our global customers.” Bullington shares three international breakfasts with us from India, Mexico, and Australia.

According to Pew Research Center, 81% of Indian adults have restrictions with regard to eating meat — these include not consuming meat on specific days of the week, and also not eating some kinds of meat. McDonald’s offers the Veg McMuffin in India with a patty that combines corn and spinach.

Mexico’s breakfast special is called McMolletes. It comes on three warm pieces of bread. On top of the bread, you get a slathering of beans with a slice of cheese and some pico de gallo on top.

Australia has a breakfast burger that looks more like the kind of sandwich a McDonald’s customer would dream up as something of a secret menu choice. This sandwich comes on toasted sesame seed buns with beef patties, bacon, egg, cheese, a hash brown, and BBQ sauce; fittingly, it’s called the Big Brekkie Burger.

Fast food breakfast can hardly be mentioned without also mentioning McDonald’s. Mike Bullington, McDonald’s archivist, discusses this deep connection, explaining, “McDonald’s revolutionized the fast-food industry by creating the breakfast daypart, a concept that was virtually non-existent before the nationwide rollout of the Egg McMuffin in 1975.” Granted, there is some contention as to whether Jack in the Box (another fast food chain that uses whole, fresh cracked eggs in some items) or McDonald’s served up the first breakfast, but the Golden Arches simply dominate the fast food breakfast scene.

Since the beginning, McDonald’s has taken pride in what Burlington describes as setting “a standard for convenience and quality that others have followed for the past 50 years. [McDonald’s] breakfast offerings changed the way people think about quick-service meals and is now part of daily routines for millions.” And to think, it all started with a franchisee with an idea and a blacksmith-made egg mold in hand, to eventually make its way to a golden anniversary.