Does Culver's Have Breakfast?

Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Wisconsin, Culver's is the great Midwestern fast-casual chain that serves up supper club-adjacent favorites, like its beefy pot roast sandwiches and mashed potatoes, alongside more traditional fast food fare. The menu never fails to surprise first-timers, with its crispy fish, fried fresh to order, and Stuffed Green Pepper Soup. While cheese curds might seem out of place on any other burger chain's menu, they make perfect sense at Culver's, since it hails from the state renowned for its cheese. For all of the hoopla surrounding the chain's lunch and dinner menu, though, you might be wondering whether it offers an equally classic and decadent breakfast menu. The answer, unfortunately, is no.

Instead, Culver's focuses all of its attention on its ButterBurgers, chicken, seafood offerings, and, of course, its famous frozen custard. However, if you live in the great state of Wisconsin, you might have some distant memories of eating breakfast at the chain in the early 2000s. For a brief period, it apparently tested breakfast at a few restaurants, but it didn't expand nationwide, nor did it last very long.

One Redditor who tried the early morning menu back in the day called it "decent." Another user who claimed to work at the chain in 2002 wrote that they "remember pancakes and walking around serving coffee."

We don't have to imagine what was lost when Culver's did away with its very limited breakfast experiment. A Redditor shared an alleged old image of the menu, and it was pretty glorious, containing everything from breakfast sandwiches and burritos to egg scrambles, cinnamon roll muffins, and even French toast.

However, the internet also had a few suggestions for why breakfast neither lasted nor expanded. Culver's had hit its stride by the late 1990s, and it was in the process of expanding throughout the following years. Perhaps adding another meal, with another set of menu items and another set of challenges, proved to be more trouble than it was worth. 

"Having to staff people for this morning menu would be a huge pain in the a** for most restaurants," one Redditor wrote, adding that the "additional ingredients and prep" likely added too much extra work. Another user wrote that Phil Keiser, the late president and CEO of Culver's, said the chain "doesn't do breakfast because it would be difficult to just break even on fast food breakfast."

Whatever the case, Culver's hasn't returned to the idea of breakfast foods since, except perhaps in 2025. In a collaboration with General Mills cereal, it at least introduced three new Concrete Mixers as part of its frozen custard lineup, with Cocoa Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Lucky Charms available for a limited time.