Most of the time when I eat at McDonalds or Burger King, it's for breakfast. Their hamburgers and what-not are so disgustingly unhealthy that I try to avoid eating them very often, but their breakfast foods are rather similar to what I would eat for breakfast at home.

Anyway, it seems to me that fast-food places keep moving their end-of-breakfast time earlier and earlier. I remember back when I was younger, like 10-12 years ago, it was typical for breakfast to end at 11am. Then in high school, it was 10:30. These days, everyone seems to end breakfast at 10:00. A couple places I've even seen 9:30. (Like the Burger King at the Detroit airport. I flew red-eye flights from Alaska, and after having barely slept at what felt like 5:30am to me, I was told I could only order a burger. So I ordered a Whopper and told myself it was more like a late-night snack.)

So the question is, why are they doing this? Does their market research really show that what people want most at 9:30 in the morning is a burger, fries and a coke? Or, more likely, do they find that most people will give in and order lunch food anyway even if they came in to buy breakfast? Considering that their breakfast foods appear to be of higher quality and thus have a lower profit margin than lunch foods, this would be a good business decision. Then they're walking the line between higher profits and irritating their customers, which in the fast food business does not bode well for the consumer.