Darrin C. Duber-Smith
Darrin C. Duber-Smith, MS, MBA, is president of Green Marketing, Inc., and senior lecturer at the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s College of Business. He has almost 30 years of specialized expertise in the marketing and management profession including extensive experience in working with natural, organic, and green/sustainable products and services. He was a co-founder of the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS, c. 1999) market/industry model and was leader of the first U.S. industry task force that helped frame the Natural Products Association’s definition of natural (c. 2005). He has published over 80 articles in trade publications and has presented at over 50 executive-level events during the past 15 years. A frequent media contributor and recipient of The Wall Street Journal’s In-Education Distinguished Professor Award in 2009 and WSJ’s Top 125 Professors Award in 2014, Mr. Duber-Smith is author of Cengage Learning’s “KnowNow! Marketing” blog at http://community.cengage.com/GECResource2/info/b/marketing/. He can be reached at DuberSmith@GreenMarketing.net or ddubersm@msudenver.edu.
The fast food wars have been heating up, and breakfast has emerged as the latest battleground. First it was McDonald's and its iconic Egg McMuffin. Then Burger King got into the act. Now just about every major fast food chain is opening earlier and earlier in an attempt to gain market share during the morning hours. The latest gimmicky breakfast product in the fast-growing segment may soon be introduced to the nation by Yum Brands' Taco Bell unit, which already serves breakfast at about 850 of its 6,000 U.S. locations.
The company says that, after some successful test marketing in a few stores in Fresno,CA, Omaha, NE, and Chatanooga, TN, it is now ready to expand the testing of an interesting new product across 100 stores in those regions. The reason for this is move is unclear. Why saturate the three markets further, rather than expand the test to other regions or simply go ahead with a national rollout? We may never know.
Regardless of all of this, if the expanded test is successful, most of us across the nation will eventually be introduced to "The Waffle Taco". It sounds gross at first blush, but it really it is just a sausage patty and scrambled egg wrapped up in a waffle. And this was the best selling offering among the entire menu of breakfast fare in the test stores. The morning not only just got more fattening, but also more interesting.