Fast Food Breakfast Menus Ranked From Best to Worst

Are you ready for a filling and tasty meal yet running out the door in the morning?

you’re not alone! Many people are on the go these days, and fast food breakfast menus offer a quick and convenient option to start your day.

But with so many restaurants to choose from, how do you know where to find the best breakfast deals and tastiest options?

This post will be your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about fast food breakfast menus, from classic sausage and egg sandwiches to sweet treats and healthy choices.

Keep reading to find your perfect fast food breakfast in no time!

 

1. McDonald’s

McDonald’s was the first big fast food business, and it’s still the best place to get a fast food breakfast.

Since the Egg McMuffin made breakfast history in 1971, Mickey D’s has come up with other great breakfast foods like portable hash browns, biscuit breakfast sandwiches, and the magnificent McGriddle.

McDonald’s came up with “all-day breakfast” in 2015 so that people could eat their breakfast foods all day and night.

No longer do people who want breakfast but are too hungover to get out of bed and run to McDonald’s, only to find that they stop offering breakfast at 10:30 a.m.

Today, you can eat a Sausage McMuffin or a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Bagel at any time of the day or night, based on where you are.

If you want McDonald’s for breakfast but are worried about your health (like your arteries), you may be happy to know that McDonald’s has some healthy(ish) options, like fruit and maple oatmeal and an Egg White Delight McMuffin, which is made with “100% freshly grilled egg whites and 250 calories.”

Even though they are pretty healthy, they still manage to be really tasty.

And if you don’t live near a McDonald’s that serves food all day, there’s no need to set an alarm.

With our recipes for their Sausage McMuffin with Egg, hash browns, and breakfast wrap, you can make your own breakfast that tastes as it came from McDonald’s.

2. Tim Hortons

The breakfast menu at Tim Hortons is great. They have basic breakfast sandwiches that everyone likes, like sausage, bacon, egg, and cheese.

“Breakfast wraps made especially for breakfast, such as their signature wraps with eggs and bacon, are also offered.”

And Tim Hortons, which cares more than most fast food places about serving healthy food, has something that not many other fast food places do: veggies on their breakfast menus.

Their bagel BELT is full of tasty bacon, egg, tomatoes, and greens to give you some nutrition in the morning.

Tim Hortons also gives us variety, which is something we don’t get at other places. Some of the other things they have on the menu are egg bites, a PB&J bowl, and even toast.

Tim Hortons is one of the few fast-food restaurants where you can get a simple side of toast for breakfast.

In 2024, the fast food place reached new heights when they added plant-based choices for people who don’t eat meat.

In a press release, the restaurant’s director of culinary innovation, Chef Tallis Voakes, said, “We’re always thinking about how to improve our menu based on what our customers tell us, and we know that many of our customers want a plant-based breakfast sandwich that tastes just as good.

Tim Hortons is out here making everyone’s breakfasts better.

3. Whataburger

We’ll do our best to explain the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit, which is a breakfast masterpiece, to people who live in the 40 sad states that don’t have a Whataburger.

Imagine a cookie that is golden brown on the outside and soft and buttered on the inside.

Then, picture a thick, crispy chicken breast tucked inside that cookie and covered in a honey-butter sauce that may or may not contain crack.

The Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit is so amazing that a preacher in McKinney, Texas, wrote a three-minute ballad about it called “Something About This Biscuit.”

Whataburger’s breakfast menu has more than just the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit.

For example, there are crunchy hash brown sticks, the Breakfast on a Bun, which is an egg, cheese, and sausage breakfast sandwich on a bun, and the famous taquitos, which many Texans think of as manna from heaven.

4. Taco Bell

Even if you don’t like Taco Bell, you have to give the Tex-Mex(ish) chain credit for being creative.

Their breakfast menu, which just came out in 2014, is bold because it doesn’t have any classics like breakfast sandwiches, pancakes, or cereal.

Most Americans are sleepy, grumpy, and not in the mood for pranks in the morning, but Taco Bell has been brave enough to try new things like the Waffle Taco and the Breakfast Crunchwrap.

Even though the Waffle Taco is no longer on the menu, Taco Bell has kept the Breakfast Crunchwrap and added a few other sorts of Tex-Mex breakfast items, like the Grand Scrambler (a huge breakfast burrito with your choice of meat, eggs, potatoes, cheese, pico de gallo, and sour cream) and the Mini Skillet Bowl (eggs with pico, melted cheese, and potatoes).

“Cinnabon Delights, which are essentially two donut holes filled with icing, are sold at T-Bell for those who desire something sweet.”

And if you like your breakfast to have a lot of sugar and caffeine, you can wash it all down with a Mountain Dew Kickstart Orange Citrus, which is kind of like fizzy fake orange juice.

5. White Castle

When it comes to breakfast, other fast food chains are serving biscuits or tacos, but White Castle is sticking to what it does best: sliders. The Castle has been serving breakfast for more than 30 years.

They currently have five breakfast sandwich/slider options with tasty extras like hash brown nibblers and tiny Belgian waffles with syrup to dip them in.

If we’re talking about Belgian waffles, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that White Castle’s waffle burgers are the stars of their breakfast menu.

White Castle doesn’t say much about the restaurant that makes its waffles, but the company imports waffles from Belgium. The waffles are definitely on the sweet side, and they have a hint of vanilla.

“The famous bacon, egg, and cheese waffle slider can’t go wrong because the eggs are scrambled right in the restaurant.”

If you want something even heartier, go for the chicken and waffles sandwich with country gravy.

In 2015, White Castle was smart enough to follow McDonald’s lead and start serving its breakfast offering all day.

If you live in a part of the United States without a White Castle, you can still buy things like the sausage, egg, and cheese slider in the frozen foods area of some grocery stores like Kroger.

But let’s be honest: they don’t even come close to the real thing.

6. Panera

We have to say that Panera does a good job with breakfast. They are trying to be different from all the other breakfasts out there.

Panera serves wraps with chipotle chicken, boiled eggs, and avocado while everyone else is making pancakes and biscuits.

They do have a lot of breakfast sandwiches, but customers don’t have to choose between a biscuit or an English muffin as the bread for their sandwich.

“If a breakfast sandwich is desired by the customer, cooked eggs with sausage or egg whites with spinach on toasted brioche or ciabatta rolls can be obtained.”

Unlike some of the fast food places on our list, Panera uses fresh eggs on all of its sandwiches. This makes a huge difference in taste compared to the liquid egg product that comes in a box.

If you don’t want a big breakfast sandwich, you can also get a bowl of cereal, a cup of Greek yogurt with berries, or a toasted bagel with cream cheese.

In 2019, CNBC said that Panera had changed its breakfast menu to fight in the very competitive breakfast wars.

The Spinach & Bacon Souffle is a welcome change from the usual fast food breakfast options. Panera’s food isn’t always as fresh as they say it is, but their breakfast choices are pretty good.

The only bad thing about it is that you can’t order it after 10:30 in the morning.

7. Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A is all about one thing besides the Christian rights movement: chicken.

You might say that chicken doesn’t belong on a breakfast menu, but the chicken-part chain works hard to show you that you’re wrong.

The main attraction of Chick-fil-A menu’s Chick-n-Minis, which are the same as any other Chick-fil-A sandwich, are probably its most famous item.

A bite wrapped in honey butter and placed in a warm mini roll. If that’s all you want, though, you could always make your own Chick-fil-A.

You can skip that wrap-around line if you get some nuggets and a fresh batch of cookies.

Chick-fil-A serves more than just Chick-n-Minis for breakfast. For example, they have a chicken, egg, and cheese bagel and a hash brown scramble with chicken nuggets and jalapeño salsa.

In 2016, Chick-fil-A added The Egg White Grill to its breakfast menu.

Some people didn’t like the new menu item, which was an egg white sandwich instead of the famous Spicy Chicken Biscuit.

If you, like some writers, were bothered by the fact that chicken and egg go together like mother and child, Chick-fil-A does have some breakfast items without chicken.

You could eat something healthy like a Greek yogurt smoothie or a fruit cup, or you could eat something unhealthy like a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit.

8. Krystal

Krystal doesn’t have as many food items as some other places, but they make up for it by being different.

When you go to Krystal, you’ll find breakfast things that you can’t get anywhere else. We really mean it.

Several fast food places offer different kinds of breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos, but only Krystal has sausage and gravy bites and a low-carb scrambler breakfast bowl.

Finding biscuits and gravy on a menu is rare enough, but it’s almost impossible to find a movable version.

And Krystal is the place to go if you want a big plate of eggs. The eggs in their scrambler breakfast bowls are more than enough.

We also recommend Krystal if you need to book for a large group.

At Krystal’s, there aren’t many things to choose from on the menu, but the ones that are there are easy to like.

9. Bojangles’

This fast-food chicken place in the South is different from most fast-food places that serve breakfast because it doesn’t have a morning menu.

Even though it might not say “breakfast” on the menu board, if you drive by a Bojangles’ at 7 a.m., you’ll almost certainly see a drive-thru line that wraps around the building.

And at Bojangles’, it’s all about the biscuits for breakfast.

If you’re thinking about biscuits in the morning, you can’t go wrong with Bojangles.

They’re in the top three, if not first, on almost every fast food biscuit power list.

They are flaky on the outside, soft on the inside, and buttery without being greasy.

You can be sure that these biscuits will taste great with fried chicken, sausage, country ham, gravy, or pimento cheese.

If you’d rather eat something sweet than something savory, you could get a cinnamon biscuit or a Bo-Berry biscuit with icing spread on top.

Plus, they’re available all day, so even if you sleep in until noon, you can still get a Bojangles Menu for breakfast.

10. Jack’s

Just to be clear, we’re talking about Jack’s, not Jack in the Box. If you go to your nearest Jack in the Box and ask for a steak biscuit, you will be disappointed.

Jack’s slogan is “It’s all about the South,” and the restaurant has almost 200 sites in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia.

When a business tries to do too much, it always runs the risk of putting quality at risk. Even though they serve burgers, fried chicken, and breakfast, Jack’s doesn’t lose the taste ball.

Customers can choose from pancakes, a breakfast wrap with eggs and sausage, hash browns, the Big Breakfast Sandwich, a breakfast plate, and a variety of biscuits for breakfast at Jack’s.

The pancakes and breakfast wrap are nothing special, so your best bet is to get a muffin or a sandwich.

Every morning, Jack makes biscuits from scratch. They aren’t quite as good as Bojangles or Chick-fil-A’s, but they are still pretty good.

A standard bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit order can’t go wrong because it’s fresh, buttery, and fluffy.

But if you want to try something new, you could try their bologna cookie, which is only available for a short time.

11. Hardee’s

Hardee’s is famous for being too much. They have big burgers with a lot of toppings, and some of their burgers have two or even three buns.

You can count on the same amount of food on their breakfast offering. It covers a lot.

And Hardee’s doesn’t just have breakfast foods that you can get at any fast food place.

On the menu, there are a lot of things that make your mouth water, but just looking at them might make your arteries harden.

Take, for example, their “monster biscuit.” On this bread sandwich, there is ham, sausage, and bacon. And if that wasn’t enough, they also fold in a huge sheet of eggs.

The loaded omelet bun is perfect for anyone who has ever wanted to eat an omelet in the form of a sandwich.

Hardee’s also has sides and plates with sweet things like cinnamon rolls and french toast dips.

But be careful:

Hardee’s doesn’t have many fruits or veggies, and if you order a couple of their breakfast items, you could easily eat all the calories you need for the day.

Still, Hardee’s breakfast is great in terms of taste and range.

12. Carl’s Jr.

Carl’s Junior has an all-day menu, but it’s not for people with weak hearts, small stomachs, or Weight Watchers die-hards.

Even the morning menu is the same. The food on the menu can be put into three groups: hearty cookies made from scratch, huge burritos, and more.

Carl’s Jr. really shines in the “and more” part of the breakfast offering. “And more” is the popular breakfast burger from the chain, which is a tower of cheese, bacon, egg, hash browns, and a beef patty.

Carl’s Jr. says it was the first big fast-food hamburger chain to put an egg on a burger. At first, the item was only available during breakfast hours.

In 2017, however, the chain said that its breakfast burger would be available all day.

Now, if you’re hungry for breakfast at 3:30 p.m. and want more than half of the calories you should eat in a day, you can have a breakfast burger instead of waiting until the next morning.

We live in a world like that.

13. Sonic

The breakfast menu at Sonic looks like any other food menu at first glance. Some burritos, some morning sandwiches, and French toast sticks are on the menu.

But Sonic’s menu stands out because of a few extra things.

First of all, both the SuperSONIC and Ultimate Meat & Cheese burritos come with real tater tots.

And the SuperSonic comes with REAL VEGETABLES like tomatoes, onions, and peppers.

¡Que increíble! Another choice is the Breakfast Toaster, which is a breakfast sandwich between two thick slices of Texas Toast.

On top of that, Sonic is another magical place that serves food all day long. In fact, it serves everything on its menu all day long.

If you’re brave, you could pair a breakfast burrito with chili cheese fries, an Oreo peanut butter shake, or your favorite type of slush.

After you place your order, one of their famous roller-skating carhops will bring it right to your car, where you can eat your breakfast in private without having to face the bright morning sun.

14. Taco John’s

We enjoy Taco John’s a lot. The food on their Tex-Mex menu is amazing and can definitely compete with Taco Bell.

Their breakfast menu has changed a bit over the years, but they still have a lot of tasty and sometimes spicy choices for the morning meal.

Taco John’s doesn’t have a lot of breakfast choices, and if you’ve never been there for breakfast before, you know what to expect because they use their regular menu as a base.

Some people might think this is obvious, but others might find it very comfortable.

Some of their breakfast items are a meat and potato breakfast burrito, a hot chorizo breakfast burrito, an olés scrambler, and Mexican donut bites. In fact, that pretty much says it all.

Also, keep in mind that almost every breakfast item at Taco John’s comes with potato olés.

But why try to fix something that doesn’t need fixing? People love potato olés, and if they can be eaten at any time of day, we won’t argue.

The breakfast at Taco John’s isn’t the best you can get at a fast food place, but it’s not the worst, either.

If you like what they serve for dinner, you’ll probably like what they serve for breakfast, too. Don’t expect to have a lot of choices, though.

15. Del Taco

“The breakfast offering at Del Taco isn’t too different from the rest of their food, with not a lot of different things to choose from, and most of them being served in a tortilla shell.”

So if you don’t like tacos, Del Taco breakfast won’t be your thing either.

We have to say, though, that what they put in their tacos is pretty good, even if it’s pretty much the same from one item to the next.

Instead of having quesadilla breakfast tacos with completely different fixings, they have two menu items that are almost the same, one with bacon and one without.

The same is true for their breakfast sandwich and breakfast roller. The only real difference is that one has carne asada and the other doesn’t.

We like the way it tastes, but there’s not much difference. We also like their donut bites and hashbrown sticks, but we wish there were more choices.

Even though we like that they sell orange juice and coffee, putting them on their breakfast menu almost seems like a way for Del Taco to try to sell more food since both of those things can be bought at any time of the day.

Breakfast at Del Taco is good, but we could use a little more.

16. Burger King

Burger King was the next big fast-food chain to try breakfast. They did this because they were jealous of McDonald’s success.

After a rough start, Burger King came out with the Croissan’Wich in 1983.

As the name suggests, the sandwich, which is still eaten today in many different ways, was made with an egg, cheese, and either sausage, bacon, or ham.

It was served on a croissant. For many Americans from smaller towns, Burger King’s Croissan’Wich was their first time eating a croissant, making it a true culinary rite of passage.

The croissant on the BK Croissan’Wich isn’t as good as the croissants you’d find in a cute cafe on the streets of Paris, but it’s still pretty good.

The Croissan’Wich croissant is soft and usually served flatter, but hey, a croissant is a croissant, oui?

Since the Croissan’Wich, Burger King has added breakfast burritos and sourdough breakfast sandwiches to its morning menu.

Some of these things are good, like the French Toast Sticks with hot syrup, but we like our own five-ingredient version better.

Others, like the pancakes, which are frozen and then heated up, are, as you might expect, not very good.

17. Five Guys

Five Guys, which everyone knows and loves, has a breakfast menu. It’s not easy to get, and there’s not much to choose from on the menu. Not only that, but the food isn’t very interesting.

Basically, all Five Guys did was put eggs and bacon on their burger buns. Now, we don’t mean to say that not being creative is always a bad thing.

If you like burgers with eggs, you’ll like the Five Guys’ breakfast menu. If you want a real breakfast, though, you’ll be disappointed.

We don’t want to say anything bad about Five Guys because their burgers are so good, but the only reason to go to the fast food place for breakfast is to say that you did.

It’s hard to find, so it’s a big deal to say that you had their breakfast. If you don’t live on the East Coast or move a lot, you’re not likely to try the Five Guys breakfast menu.

18. Wendy’s

If you didn’t know that Wendy’s serves breakfast, it’s because they only started doing so recently.

In the 1980s, the chain started serving breakfast, but most of its restaurants stopped doing it because it was hard to make a lot of money in the fast-food breakfast business.

It will be tried again in 2020 when food will be served all over the country. Their morning menu isn’t quite ready yet, which is a shame.

Wendy’s has its own version of the Whataburger Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit, which is a popular breakfast item in Texas. But the one at Wendy’s isn’t quite as good as the one at Whataburger.

The seasoned homestyle potatoes and the Classic Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich, which is served on a warm breakfast roll with American cheese, freshly cracked eggs, and applewood-smoked bacon, are two of the most popular items on Wendy’s morning menu.

Also, Wendy’s has its own brand of Redhead Roasters coffee, which has been called one of the best fast-food coffees.

19. Dunkin’ Donuts

People have a strong sense of loyalty to places like Dunkin’ Donuts.

When the chain from the East Coast first opened in Los Angeles, people waited in line for up to 30 hours to try the food.

So, what can they do for you?

The business lives up to its name by offering simple donuts, pastries, bagels, breakfast sandwiches, and drinks in the morning.

Dunkin’ Donuts has a new menu with hand-made espresso drinks, but their sweetened coffee is where they really shine.

“Specializing in holiday drinks like PEEPS marshmallow coffee, it is known that their coffee is best served iced, even when there’s snow on the ground, as anyone from New England, where DD was founded, can tell you.”

If you drink it black, it’s pretty sour and a little bitter, so it’s one of those places that caters a lot to people who like cream and sugar in their coffee.

The morning sandwiches at Dunkin’ Donuts aren’t very good, which is a shame. Their basic meat, egg, and cheese items come on an English muffin, a bagel, or a croissant.

They also have mini Wake-Up Wraps with egg, cheese, and a choice of meat.

We’ve noticed that this chain’s English muffins taste off, and the croissants are a little too greasy, but the bagels are usually dry.

What’s up?

But the donuts are always good, and the muffins are out of this world (they better be since each one has 460 calories).

Order a donut and delicious iced coffee to start your day off right at Dunkin’ Donuts. Americans may run on Dunkin’, but not on their breakfast sandwiches.

20. Starbucks

When it first opened, Starbucks only offered coffee and espresso drinks.

The chain didn’t start selling breakfast sandwiches at its Seattle stores until 2003, but now you can find all kinds of tasty things at Starbucks.

Most of their sandwiches have meat, egg, and cheese on ciabatta, bread, English muffin, or croissant.

But theirs are different because they are made with good materials. The bread is fresh, crispy, or soft depending on what you want, and not too dry.

There is cheese, of course, but it’s Swiss, Gouda, and cheddar, not the strange processed American cheese you find elsewhere. But there are a few bad things.

“The “scrambled” eggs on the sandwich are actually made of puffed scrambled egg patties consisting of milk, food starch, soybean oil, and other ingredients.”

“Oh, and all of them are made ahead of time, frozen, and then shipped to the shop to be heated up.”

Or, if you want to eat something a little bit healthier, you could try a cup of cereal, a yogurt parfait, or an egg and cheese protein box. Basically, they have something for everyone, though nothing is particularly good.

Their drinks are, of course, the best around. Serious coffee snobs can get a single-origin pour-over, while a friend who doesn’t like caffeine can drink a strawberries and creme mixed Frappuccino.

Tea is also available. Basically, if you’re thirsty in the morning or want a pastry, they have something that’s not bad but not great either, as long as you don’t mind a reheated breakfast.

If you want to be sure that your favorite Starbucks breakfast items are fresh, you can always make them yourself.

All of our recipes for pumpkin scones, pumpkin bread, lemon loaf, and egg bites are better than anything you could get at Starbucks.

21. Jack in the Box

Okay, remember when we said that McDonald’s is the one who came up with the idea for the breakfast sandwich and started the whole fast-food breakfast industry?

Well, it turns out that Jack in the Box had been selling an egg, meat, and cheese breakfast sandwich that wasn’t as popular for at least a year before McDonald’s introduced the Egg McMuffin.

Also, breakfast is served all day at Jack in the Box and has been for more than 20 years. McDonald’s won’t be able to say that for a while.

So why haven’t the breakfast items at Jack in the Box gotten the same love?

If you’ve ever woken up early and looked at what’s in your brown paper Jack in the Box bag, you’ll know that the chain’s breakfast options aren’t all that great.

It has the usual breakfast foods, like English muffin breakfast sandwiches, biscuit sandwiches, croissant sandwiches, hash browns, and tiny pancakes.

All of them are hearty, recognizable, and fast, but nothing stands out.

It even has a couple of breakfast sandwiches, one of which is served with what sounds like a tasty “creamy Sriracha sauce.”

But even though the Sriracha sauce tastes a little bit like Sriracha, it’s not very spicy.

Spicy-food lovers who saw the word “Sriracha” and hoped for the best are going to be especially disappointed.

22. Subway

Did you know that food was served at Subway?

The same is true for 19% of Subway users. The sandwich company started a breakfast menu in 2010, but it didn’t do very well.

In the summer of 2018, Subway started letting locations choose not to serve breakfast.

The choice to stop serving breakfast may be good for Subway’s finances and kind to customers who come in looking for something to eat early in the morning.

Four sandwiches, like ones with bacon, steak, and eggs, are available for breakfast at Subway. “These sandwiches can be placed on any of the boring bread that Subway is known for.”

The meat tastes like it was out on the assembly line all morning, which is probably true.

“The egg mixture is considered boring and rubbery, and it is said to contain a lot of scary ingredients such as propylene glycol, which is also found in antifreeze, glycerin, which is found in soap, and dimethylpolysiloxane, which is found in Silly Putty.”

Not exactly the kind of food you want to eat before going to school, work, or fighting crime.

FAQs – Fast Food Breakfast Menus

Conclusion

But it’s important to know that you shouldn’t eat too much of these breakfast foods. The calories, salt, and fat in fast food breakfast menus are often high, which can be bad for your health if you eat them often.

If you want to eat a better breakfast, you might want to make it at home. This lets you decide what goes into your meal and how healthy it is.

Simple choices like overnight oats, smoothies, or avocado toast can be quick, easy, and healthy.

Overall, fast-food breakfast choices can be helpful when you’re in a hurry, but it’s important to choose wisely and in moderation.

Keep our scores in mind, and don’t forget to eat a mix of healthy and unhealthy foods all day long.