Marilyn Marter of the Philadelphia Inquirer says we might be in the middle of "a full-fledged breakfast war", with big companies fighting for portions of the $78 billion breakfast market. Ron Paul, president of a research firm that tracks the food-service industry, "estimates that 15 to 18 percent of breakfasts are currently being sourced from restaurants (compared with about 25 percent of dinners), with McDonald's, the largest restaurant chain, in the lead, feeding 27 million Americans daily." They've of course long had a serious breakfast menu, but the competition is trying to catch up: Burger King rolled out a ten item one last year, Dunkin Donuts is experimenting with gussied-up offerings, and even chains you would necessarily expect breakfast offerings from, like Starbucks and Subway, are getting into the action.

The market for at-home breakfast foods is no slouch either—projected sales for this year are $29.6 billion—so don't be surprised to see more and more breakfast items, of the healthy, organic kind as well as just the plain convenient, on the aisles and in the freezers every time you visit the supermarket.