Half of the World Cup matches are held between 5 a.m. and 12 noon: breakfast orders surge by 60% during the period from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., and the catering consumption time slots are being reshaped by the tournament.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico features a total of 104 matches. Converted to Beijing time, more than half of the matches are scheduled between 5 a.m. and 12 p.m. For domestic office workers, the match viewing hours overlap with their sleep, breakfast and commuting time, which has reshaped the consumption patterns previously formed around late-night football watching.
Consumption data has already reflected the shift in consumption time slots. Monitoring from JD Takeaway shows that during the World Cup, breakfast orders placed between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. rose by about 60% compared with the pre-tournament period, and orders between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. registered a growth rate of nearly 50%. Although this data only comes from a single platform and cannot represent the whole industry, it is enough to demonstrate that new consumption demands have been generated in the early morning hours. Categories that are easy to deliver and suitable for eating while watching matches, such as hamburgers, soups and congee, and boiled dumplings, have achieved faster growth than traditional breakfast items.
Current match-viewing consumption is divided into three scenarios: early morning matches are more suitable for home viewing, which continues to drive the consumption of midnight snacks and takeaway; matches held in the early morning overlap with commuting time, making breakfast, coffee and convenience store products more popular among consumers; only a small number of key matches will drive users to gather offline. The ability to capture this wave of new orders depends on whether stores can operate in line with the match schedule, rather than simply relying on marketing promotions.
Coffee and fast food brands naturally have inherent time advantages. Many coffee brands take advantage of the World Cup to attract football fans through cooperations related to football teams and star players, so as to drive beverage sales, in-store foot traffic and member growth. Fast food chains focus on in-store operations, launching match-themed products, and some stores have created dedicated match-viewing themed spaces. Unlike bars that need to temporarily adjust their morning business hours, fast food outlets already have fixed breakfast shifts, takeaway processes and morning staff arrangements. The World Cup only provides a new consumption reason for these stores, without requiring them to reconstruct their entire business model.
The common advantage of coffee shops, fast food outlets and convenience stores is that they already have mature morning operation capabilities and standardized products, allowing consumers to complete purchases quickly. The World Cup only amplifies the popularity of most products, and does not require stores to completely change their original revenue structure for the tournament. Some bakeries and shopping malls have also advanced their opening time to 6:30 a.m., adding a World Cup atmosphere to their existing breakfast business, which follows the same logic.
In contrast, bars and alcohol brands face greater difficulties in adapting to early morning matches. Bars are equipped with large screens and have an environment suitable for group match viewing, but opening in the early morning will lead to higher costs on labor, energy consumption and food preparation. On weekday mornings, alcoholic drinks can hardly become the mainstream choice. Many stores and brands have turned to non-alcoholic drinks, breakfast set meals, or cooperated with other catering formats to explore new solutions, turning the challenge brought by the time difference of matches into new business ideas.
However, the problem for night-operated stores is not as simple as holding early morning match-viewing activities. The number of customers varies greatly due to different rounds of matches and different popularity of participating teams, and the morning demand of stores around communities, business districts and office buildings also differs from each other. Even if unified promotional materials can be deployed quickly, stores still need to weigh the labor and food input for each match to control operating costs.
Sports event marketing can drive short-term orders, but the catering industry is currently in a competitive environment with high marketing investment. Rising marketing investment does not necessarily directly translate into the improvement of store operation efficiency. Therefore, different formats need to use practical indicators to measure the benefits brought by early morning matches: coffee and fast food outlets focus on member retention after the event and the daily sales performance of stores; bars need to calculate whether the morning revenue can cover the new additional costs; takeaway platforms observe whether the early morning order peak is replicable. Brand exposure does not equal the actual profit of the store.
Large-scale events can temporarily change the public's consumption time, but the behavior of "watching football matches and having breakfast in the morning" may not evolve into a long-term consumption habit. After the event ends, what can be truly retained are still the supply chain, store network and user base accumulated by the brands. For merchants, the greater test lies in whether they can flexibly adapt to market changes at a relatively low cost when facing temporary changes in consumers' time arrangements.