Wagamama wants to join the breakfast club. But will its customers?

I had a sense of deja vu earlier this month when Wagamama announced the launch of its ‘first ever’ brunch menu ​​across 22 of its restaurants. While this might be technically true, in the fact that it is rolling it out to more than one restaurant and it is therefore officially a ‘thing’, I’m sure there are many people who will recall the Japanese group’s previous attempt at breakfast - I would also argue that the serving time of 8.30 til 11.30 is actually breakfast and not brunch, but let’s not split hairs.

Wagamama previously trialled a breakfast offer​​ back in 2015 at its Great Marlborough Street restaurant, most likely as a result of it opening the same year a restaurant at Gatwick Airport, where restaurants are obliged to open early and where morning offers can be found at other non-breakfast brands, including Nando’s. The logic, one presumes, was that once it had gone to the trouble of developing a morning offer for travellers - menu items include Japanese omelettes, mackerel and egg on toast, and morning baos - it might as well trial it in a high street setting.

History suggests that the trial wasn’t a barnstorming success, otherwise morning baos would be gracing the menus of every Wagamama. It didn’t also come as much of a surprise, given the failed attempts by the Italian chains Pizza Express and Zizzi to make their mark in the breakfast market in 2010. Back then both chains were owned by Gondola Holdings, and in October that year Pizza Express began serving breakfast​​ for the first time at its Richmond site, dubbed the first of the group’s ‘new generation’ of restaurants. Zizzi followed suit the same month, trialling a ‘Brunchetta’ menu​​. At the time both brands promised their breakfast menus would be rolled out across their estates if successful. I have never been out for brunchetta.

Then followed an attempt in the Thai sector, with the short-lived Naamyaa from Wagamama and Busaba Eathai founder Alan Yau. Launched in 2012 and backed by Phoenix Capital Partners, which brought Busaba in 2008, it was a crack at the all-day category with a breakfast offer that included pastries. Breakfast, however, was later ditched, with the restaurant changing its opening times to midday.

Given all that’s come before it, Wagamama’s attempt at breakfast this time round seems to defy logic. Its motives are understandable - the breakfast market has performed strongly in recent years thanks to the likes of brands such as The Breakfast Club, Where the Pancakes Are, Caravan, Granger & Co and many more, and with rents and costs the way they are it makes sense for a business to try and sweat its fixed assets as much as possible - but I can’t help but feel it is asking too much of its customers’ imaginations.

Historically, brands that do well in the breakfast space are those that have always done breakfast, that have sowed the seeds of being a place for an early morning visit right from inception. Those that haven’t, and instead look to retrospectively get in on the act, are at a disadvantage that has proven almost impossible to overcome. You need only look at the largely unsuccessful attempts by day-time businesses such as bakery chain Paul and Itsu and their crack at the evening market, to see how hard it is to change customers’ perceptions and habits.

This is not to say that there isn’t an appetite for Japanese food (or indeed Thai) at breakfast time. Dishoom proved to its early doubters that it could make Indian food – a cuisine that had hitherto only really been served for lunch and dinner in UK-based restaurants - into a compelling breakfast offer, with its bacon naan roll the stuff of group restaurant folklore. Rather, can a brand so associated with lunch and dinner, as Wagamama is, convince people that it is the place to eat it at? I, personally, think it will find it hard.

As I write this, an email pops into my inbox heralding the launch of a breakfast menu at Bar Kroketa ​​on St Christopher’s Place, which opened last month. Divided into toasties, eggs, classics and sides, breakfast options include sobrasada, honey and grated mahon cheese; baked eggs flamenca; and torreja - a Spanish style French toast with agave. Introducing breakfast just one month in could well work, but 33 years after launch makes it much harder.