Imagine it. You get up in the morning and every day you eat at the same place. Only it’s not your kitchen table or your granite covered breakfast bar.

No.

It’s McDonald’s.

Think I’m kidding?

I saw a statistic that fully 20% of all breakfast eaten every day in America is at McDonald’s.

And they’re not eating apples and sipping the orange juice. McDonalds started selling the “McSkillet Burrito” nationwide at the end of November. Its stats:

The $2.49 tortilla is folded over a filling of scrambled eggs, a sausage patty, potatoes, roasted peppers, onions, cheese and red salsa, the company said.

It contains 610 calories, 1,390 grams of sodium and 36 grams of fat, including 14 grams of saturated fat and 0.5 grams of trans fat, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

And how many people are eating more than one of these? And what happens when you add on the hash browns too?

Breakfast is huge business for McDonalds. From the UPI:

“Breakfast all day is certainly something we’ll always take under consideration, but I can fairly tell you it’s not something that is going to happen for a long time,” McDonald’s USA Chief Operating Officer Jan Fields said in a webcast news conference.

Breakfast accounts for 24 percent of McDonald’s Corp.’s U.S. sales and 28 percent of transactions, she said.

Soon, you’ll be able to have your deluxe big breakfast all day long. How great would that be? Admit it. You’ve driven into McDonald’s on a weekend morning at 10:55 am only to discover that they have stopped serving the breakfast and you have to order lunch. How annoying! When what you were really craving was the sausage patty and those pancakes. All day breakfast would be nirvana.

Some people can’t get enough and eat at McDonald’s every single day. You think I’m kidding? From the Wall Street Journal:

Angel Crawford, a 49-year-old Chicago resident, said she visits McDonald’s every day for breakfast and other meals, but has been staying away from the higher-priced items on the Dollar Menu & More section. “I don’t buy them because they went up,” she said.

For once, I just don’t know what to say.

And I thought Starbucks was so addictive that people would continue to order their lattes regardless of price. Apparently McDonald’s is also nearly recession proof.

Have you ever gotten a Chia Pet as a gift?

I’m betting the answer is “yes.”

And who doesn’t know their famous jingle? You can watch the original 1980s commerical with the jingle on YouTube here. It’s brilliant branding and marketing.

But there is more than just fun and games to Chia. Chia Pets and Chia Heads are owned by a company called Joseph Enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is some history you may not be aware of:

First Chia Pet: The ram, first marketed in 1982.

Chias and the Holidays: According to the company’s website, they are sold only during the holiday season because: “Chia Pets and Chia Heads are handmade pottery items. It takes an entire year to produce enough Pets and Heads for one holiday season.”

Joseph Enterprises also markets the other great holiday item: The Clapper.

This year, you can also buy the Chia Herb garden and the Chia Catgrass- where the cat eats the grass. Their website says it provides “essential vitamins and folic acid” and “aids in digestion”. An added bonus: it also freshens kitty breath!

Don’t laugh about the Chia Herb Garden. It is mentioned on numerous gardening websites as an easy way to grow your own herbs and you can grow them all winter. The seeds are organic.

I’ve never gotten a Chia Pet myself. But if I did, I think I’d just have to grow it to see if it really does work.

Come on, admit it. You’ve gotten a Chia before. Question is, did you grow it?

Starbucks is about to advertise on tv for the first time in its history. That’s kind of stunning considering they went public as a company over 15 years ago. That’s how good the word of mouth and other free advertising has been for them (movies, books etc.)

But now that Starbucks is about to enter into the world of advertising, I would like to throw my two cents in as to what they should be putting into the commercials. I’m no professional, but I ama Starbucks consumer.

My “Expert” Advice

Starbucks is all about community. Make me all warm and fuzzy. Many people have married people they have met in Starbucks: some met on a blind date, some met just by typing on their laptops at a corner table by the window, some met by sipping a drink in one of the lounge chairs and engaging in conversation, some met by studying with a college classmate. The stories are endless.

Hold a contest for people to tell you how they met the person of their dreams at Starbucks. I remember a few years ago, in the Vows section of the New York Times (the section that talks about how couples meet) there was a story of a woman in Manhattan who had gone to a local Starbucks in her neighborhood to write out some holiday Thank You cards. While sitting at a table writing out the cards, a man sat down at a table nearby and they struck up a conversation. They had a lot in common and ended up talking for hours. They, of course, later got married.

Aw….

Why are you different than Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks? Because people meet the love of their lives in your stores.

Work Stories Are Warm and Fuzzy Too

Or what about the people who are legitimately working at a Starbucks everyday? And I’m not talking about the Starbucks employees. There are people who are blogging and making a living doing it. Didn’t Perez Hilton, one of the celebrity bloggers, blog at a Starbucks in Hollywood for months before hitting the big time? (or maybe that was another coffee shop.) Perhaps he would want some payment to appear in an ad. But others wouldn’t.

There are many success stories. People who have gotten a dream job because of an interview at Starbucks. People who have written best selling novels while sitting at Starbucks.

They’re not doing any of those things at the local McDonalds.

Yes, it’s about the coffee. But it’s also about the feeling I get when I think of Starbucks. I want to feel connected to my community. Coffee, working on my laptop, meeting the love of my life. Those are the Starbucks experiences.

That’s what I want to see in the first Starbucks commercial.

But that’s just me.

Starbucks, are you listening???

A interesting thing happened on my trip to Allegan, Michigan over Thanksgiving (yes that city again). While driving there, I stopped at a McDonalds for breakfast in Portage, Indiana (not far from the Chicago Skyway.) This particular McDonalds is built into a bigger gas station rest stop so there is a convenience store and a Subway sandwich shop in addition to the McDonalds.

While eating my Big Breakfast (highly recommend this as it’s eggs, sausage, a biscuit and hash browns for only about $3.50), I overheard a fellow traveler sitting at the booth behind me with her children lamenting: “if only there was a Starbucks within ten miles of here.”

I wanted to interrupt her and say, “there is- about 3 miles up the road” but I didn’t. (I was driving east bound on 94 she must have been going west bound because I clearly saw the Starbucks logo on the restaurant signs on the side of the road about 3 miles before I got off to eat at the McDonalds.)

Why did she so desperately want her Starbucks when McDonalds now offers what everyone has said (I’m not a coffee drinker myself) is delicious coffee?

Maybe she wanted a latte instead (which, for now, McDonalds isn’t offering.)

But that could be about to change. McDonalds is apparently trying to convince its franchisees that lattes and other high priced coffee drinks are the way to go. From the Associated Press:

“We want to move from beverages as an accompaniment to being a beverage destination,” Don Thompson, president of McDonald’s USA, said in a recent meeting with analysts. “Our speed, our convenience, the value that we can afford to customers” without compromising quality will make McDonald’s a formidable player, he said.

Restaurants will offer lattes, mochas, cappuccinos and espressos with a choice of different flavorings and milk. Industry watchers say the drinks will cost about 50 cents less than at Starbucks.”

Should Starbucks Be Worried?

If given a choice, this woman traveler would have been in a Starbucks and not the McDonalds. But I’m not so sure that McDonalds doesn’t beat out Starbucks in other locales.

In the city

McDonalds has added things like couches to some of its restaurants but I’ve never seen anyone sitting on one. Nor have I seen anyone sitting with their laptop open and hanging out in a McDonalds in the city (like you do at Starbucks.) Starbucks still has the edge in the big cities. It needs to return to being the community meeting place. People still have dates at Starbucks. They meet for job interviews or to meet with headhunters at Starbucks. They hang out at Starbucks after school or in between classes. These are Starbucks strengths.

On Starbucks website, they have a search feature where you can find out about Starbucks “events” near you which include music, Starbucks book club and things like that.

Great! Making Starbucks a part of the community. That’s what they need.

Only when I searched for “book club” in the entire state of Illinois, I found no events. So then I searched using the “find all” feature and discovered that there is only one upcoming book event in the entire country- in Dover New Hampshire. Most of the other “events” were hiring fairs or where Starbucks’ Angels were giving out free drinks at some holiday parade.

This “events” feature could be a great thing- but the company isn’t using it correctly. What a drag.

Otherwise, in the cities, they have to make sure that the coffee is darn good. They’re competing with lots of the local cafes now for taste and ambiance.

In the suburbs

Starbucks has been adding drive throughs to its suburban stores. Smart. But now that McDonalds is getting into the latte business, you will be able to go through the drive through and also get your McMuffin, one of the most popular breakfast items in the country. McDonalds will have an edge in these suburban locations- especially if they’re charging 50 cents less a cup.

In small town America

Stabucks is underrepresented in small town America. There is no Starbucks in my grandmother’s town of Allegan (and likely won’t be for another decade or more.) McDonalds didn’t even come to Allegan until 1984 or 1985. There are two or three freestanding Starbucks (outside of Meijer or Target stores) in Holland, about 16 miles to the north.

It’s hard to get any brand loyalty in these small town locations because most of the people have never tried your brand.

But for McDonalds, it’s easy. Allegan actually had a parade for the first McDonalds opening over 20 years ago. (It was that big of a deal. The closest McDonalds before it opened was about a 20 minute drive.) They recently tore down that restaurant and built a new one- complete with a drive-thru. Progress!

According to my grandmother, the local retired women go to McDonalds every morning for breakfast. And they go for the coffee. They RAVE about the coffee.

Who would have thunk it?

McDonalds has strong ties in small town America

Brand loyalty. McDonalds has the breakfast AND the coffee. Deadly combination. In ten years, when Starbucks does finally open in Allegan, they won’t be able to compete with that unless they have some new breakfast offerings or something else to bring people into the store.

Or darn good coffee and atmosphere (aka, meaning far better than McDonalds.)

Starbucks has a challenge ahead. But management should welcome it. As McDonalds grew stale in the 1990s, after it rose to the heap of the burger chains and wasn’t challenged, so Starbucks has also rested on its laurels in recent years. The McDonalds challenge is just the kick in the behind the company needs to rise to new heights.