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Add Luster to Breakfast Menus
with Southern Menus
Written By: Nation’s Restaurant News
Published: August 13, 2024
Consumers Voice Interest in Popular Regional Food Trends
Breakfast in America wouldn’t be the same without the benefit of Southern food trends. Imagine greeting the day without flaky drop biscuits, buttery cornbread, savory country ham or hearty pork sausage links and patties, to mention just a few. Southern-inspired items like these are key elements of a winning menu mix for restaurant and noncommercial operators competing in the booming breakfast market.
Riding the Southern Breakfast Wave
All told, 68% of consumers say they love or like Southern food.1 The two customer demographic groups with the strongest interest in Southern flavors are Gen Z (58%) and Millennials (54%), surpassing Gen X (44%) and Boomers (31%).1 Those two younger demographic groups also score higher than other groups for interest in next-generation breakfast bowls, alternative ingredients and on-trend breakfast items, such as chilaquiles and huevos divorciados.
However, research suggests operators can do more to bring innovative breakfast items—particularly Southern-influenced ones—to customers. As of 2023, 45% of patrons say they are interested in breakfast Southern flavors, but only 38% of operators offer them. When it comes to next-generation breakfast bowls, 34% of patrons are interested, but only 19% of operators offer them. For chilaquiles, 26% of patrons are interested, while 14% of operators offer them. For huevos divorciados, 25% are interested, whereas only 10% of operators offer them. 2
This can be read as a call for operators to increase the quality, number and variety of Southern favorites on their breakfast menus. It is logical to start with proteins that shine in breakfast plates, sandwiches and bowls. The versatile and convenient Jimmy Dean® product line has the top-selling formats and most sought-after flavors to help operators meet breakfast market challenges and craft on-trend, Southern-inspired breakfast dishes.
Included are fully cooked and ready-to-cook Jimmy Dean® center-of-the-plate sausages and bacon and grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches and breakfast bowls, which help save time in the kitchen and provide consistent quality. Other noteworthy Jimmy Dean® product offerings include sausage crumbles and breakfast bites.
Chefs exploring Southern traditions will find pork sausage a fundamental building block of the cuisine. “Pork sausage plays a prominent role in the South’s traditional breakfast biscuits and platters, and shares icon status with favorites such as chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits and country ham,” says Jennifer Wood, Director of Customer & Sales Engagement, at Tyson Foodservice.
Showcasing Sought-after Flavors
For over 50 years, consumers have trusted the quality and consistency of Jimmy Dean® breakfast products. Showcasing the brand’s sought-after flavor profiles sets menus apart from the competition and helps give restaurant and noncommercial operators a marketing advantage in the breakfast space. Here are some ways to tap Jimmy Dean® products to bolster breakfast business:
Loaded Sausage Tot Bowl is a pure comfort food play that will score highly with customers. It features Jimmy Dean® Sausage Tots in a savory medley of scrambled eggs, sausage gravy, hot sauce and scallions.
Southwest Benedict is sure to please fans of zesty flavors in their morning meals. It is made with Jimmy Dean® Fully Cooked Pork Sausage Patties served atop savory corn cakes with creamy hollandaise sauce, poached eggs, green chilies, tomato and smoked paprika.
Breakfast Empanadas filled with Jimmy Dean® Fully Cooked Original Skinless Pork Sausage Links and Jimmy Dean® Fully Cooked Bacon Pieces, plus scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, jalapeños and roasted potatoes, are a lively new stage for promoting favorite breakfast meats.
Adding Further Southern Flair
Operators who start with quality products like the above can add fun and flavorful Southern influences to create menu applications ranging from comfort food to global fare. When Datassential reported key learnings about the South in 2023, it noted the versatility of Southern food for cross-utilizing regional ingredients, the knack Southern trends have for spreading across the country, and the cuisine’s penchant for highlighting seasonal produce.2
A few tweaks and twists for adding Southern flair include folding pimento cheese into grits for a creamy and piquant breakfast side, dipping halved biscuits into red-eye gravy to elevate signature breakfast biscuits, and folding Nashville hot sauce into hollandaise to create a tongue-tingling take on eggs Benedict.
Operators will benefit from the speed, ease and flexibility of executing fully cooked Jimmy Dean® products, which typically can be heated in the microwave, convection or conventional ovens. They also enhance food safety by reducing the handling of raw products in the kitchen.
Start Your Flavor Adventure
To find out more about crafting superlative Southern breakfast specialties, check out Jimmy Dean® brand products.
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Sources:
1. Datassential Trends Watch, Southern Trends issue, June 2023.
2. Datassential, 2023.
