Breakfast Burrito ideas

[Barracuda]

As some of you know, a friend and I are trying to open a breakfast stand, however, we aren't having much luck so far with our basic breakfast burrito ideas. I was hoping to get some suggestions and feedback for things that would go good in a breakfast burrito. We are especially interested in a good, interesting sauce idea--we tried one with coriander (cilantro) chutney that didn't work out too well. The flavors just were a little odd with egg. Here's my current ideas:

The Basic: Egg, sausage or bacon, cheddar, and country fries style hashbrowns
The Veggie: Egg, sauteed mushrooms, onions, and red bell pepper with cheddar
The Pacific NW: Egg, smoked salmon, cream cheese, and dill
The Inferno: Egg, spicy sausage (so far thinking either Andouille, hot Portuguese, or chorizo) habanero jack (yes, habanero jack, not regular pepperjack), and hot salsa or hot sauce
El Gaucho: Strips of steak, egg, and chimichurri sauce
The Farmer: Egg, strips of country-fried steak, and country gravy
The Spicy Canuck: Eggs, jalapeno jelly, cream cheese and Canadian bacon

What do you guys think?

[sms001]

It looks to me (who would eat each and every one of those!) like you have a fairly balanced blend, except for the 'lowest common denominator.' Perhaps another item or two on the non-adventurous side? Beyond that I'd probably check my price points and amenities - are they easy and clean to eat? Is the wait time acceptable? etc.

Good luck!

[Aethian]

Those sound good but what about eggs, bacon, potato, and green pepper? I make that on Sunday mornings sometimes.

[trailerparkmedic]

Do you have a bean and cheese taco? With all the zillions of varieties in my Texas city, I always go for bean and cheese. It has to be good refried beans though, the ones made from scratch with some lard. Omnomnom. Traditionally you put a smear of beans on everything, even a bacon, egg, and cheese taco.

Chorizo is always a good option. I really like barbacoa but it would probably be pretty tough to do that on a food truck sized scale. Put bacon on everything. For sauces, most good hole in the wall places around me have either salsa or a very hot green sauce (not tomatillo, probably jalapeno based).

To me, the breakfast taco is all about the tortilla. Doughy tortillas from the grocery store don't cut it; there's nothing like fresh tortillas. Of course, I'm spoiled and I live in a Texas town where such things are readily available.

[csquared]

Are you planning on making them in advance or on demand? If it is on demand, you have your suggestions. Just list out what ingredients you have available.

I would also suggest that you let us sample some of these. Then we can give you a proper opinion. Just saying...

[Barracuda]

If you lived in my area, I would be more than glad to. However, we do have a limited space to store food (In a church kitchen, we have maybe one large fridge) and while I am considering seeing if we can buy a food cart, we don't have one yet. We are currently just using a table, although we got no interest (I think we need to be better organized and prepared, my associate keeps trying to wing it. For a chef, he's remarkably poor at organizing and resists my suggestions.) We also only have an hour to prep before we open at 7; the church simply isn't open earlier than that, and while it would be nice if we had a key, we don't. Right now, I am thinking prep in advance, although to order would be nice if we could make the wait time only a couple minutes.

[csquared]

And I am guessing that you are not in the Atlanta area...

If you are making them in advance, then you need to know what people want. You are really not going to know that until you get started. I would suggest that you start with the basics, and ask your customers what they would like. Have some sample bites of the more exotic ones. Nothing like getting someone hooked on a breakfast burrito that only you make.

Good luck!

[ArcticChicken]

I agree with sms001, I think you need another non adventurous one.


OK, keep in mind I have no idea what I'm talking about, but this feels right. You need more overlap. Right now, the only thing all your breakfasts have in common is the eggs and the tortilla. If everyone wants a 'basic', at the end of the day you have a bunch of smoked salmon, steak, country fried steak, and spicy sausage that you may have to throw away, whereas if you invest in a bunch of different sauces and other things that spoil less readily, you can still have a lot of variety in flavor without risking as much.

Personally, I like an ingredients list that you pick from, and a few suggested combinations.

[auntiem]

I would have the Pacific NW w/o the egg but add sprouts (I personally don't like my eggs "to go").
What about another non-egg option? Like cornbeef hash, onion, green pepper and (optional) cheese. Or turkey, cream cheese and cranberry relish.
I noticed there aren't any sweet options - a simple fried plantain (or bannana if you can't get those) and chocolate/cinnamon sauce.
As for the selling option - a local donut shop sent a bunch of samples over the day before they opened to a building full of engineers - that whole building were regulars once they opened. Maybe check to see what offices are nearby and offer samples or coupons to those people to start.

[Barracuda]

We weren't going to offer the whole list I put out. Basically, we were going to offer maybe the top two and one of the others as a weekly special. Also, we are not just serving breakfast burritos, we have egg muffin sandwiches with sausage or bacon and cheese (think McMuffin) and a Greek yogurt/fruit parfait with fresh granola as well as offering coffee, juice, and the like as well as two types of fritatta--one with meat, potato and cheese and one with leeks, mushrooms and potato and cheese. I don't know, maybe being a specialty breakfast burrito stand would be the way to go; we would still offer the coffee and juice too, of course. We aren't going to do espresso, but we have two nice kinds of coffee--a nice Columbian roast and a Hawaiian blend flavored with vanilla and macadamia.

[Jester]

As for sausage in the Inferno, to use Italian or Andouille in a burrito over CHORIZO would be, in my Southwestern mind, simply criminal. However, before you make your decisions, you need to take in mind who your audience is. So...who are they? Midwesterners? Northeasterners? A mixed crowed? Southwesterners like myself? Is our area generally culinarily adventurous, or are they more conservative in their tastes? These are important questions.

Also, one good selling point in many (but not all) markets would be to have at least one of the options be vegetarian, or at least semi-vegetarian, since egg will almost certainly be in a breakfast burrito--basically, one with no red meat.

If you want to actually talk some of these through, PM me, as I have had tons of breakfast burritos, both here and in my trips to Mexico. I have a few ideas, but right now am in a bar drinking, so would love to talk to you about this in more detail. So, yeah....PM me.

[Andara Bledin]

Another option might be to have comment cards. Have your customers (or potential customers) fill out little mini surveys about what they want on their burritos so you can take the most popular ideas and use those direct with the runners up rotating through the week.

^-.-^

[Jester]

Andara reminded me of something you should think about that will help you here. You can run 2 of 3 regular items, and run an additional item as a "special" to see how it fares with customers, changing the special every few days. This is a classic technique used by restaurants to flesh out dishes to use (or not use) when they change their menus. The best received/best selling dish is usually added to the new menu, while dishes that did not perform as well are not. Something you might want to think about doing yourselves, for the same purpose.

[Barracuda]

I'm in the Pacific Northwest. So, large foodie area, and a lot of favorite tastes. As for the sausage, I didn't say Italian, I said Portuguese. Specifically, Linguica, which is a favorite breakfast sausage in Hawaiian cuisine (Usually served with fruit, rice and guava juice.) However, it does come in spicier varieties, so I thought of it. It's a lot like chorizo, but less oily, which is a plus--it can take a while to cook all the grease out of chorizo. Andouille I considered simply because it's spicy and very tasty--wonderful flavor, but I can see how it might not go with egg. I'm still debating, though--haven't even had a chance to run these past my business partner, and I want to convince him to forget the stand idea and buy an old hot dog stand/towable trailer I found for $3300. I think it will work better, and it's mobile, which means we could use the church kitchen as our prep kitchen, then go set up someplace else if we wanted.

[Jester]

My bad on the sausage. And yes, the Linguica would go far better in breakfast burritos (and with eggs in general) than Andouille.