Breakfast is back, with a calorific vengeance. After the fads of micro-waveable porridge or the skinny latte from Starbucks with a low-fat muffin, now is the era of the on-the-hop, drive-thru, free-range Egg and Sausage McMuffin . . . with cheese.

McDonald’s – four years into its healthy drive to offer salads, chicken, fruit and juice – boasted yesterday that breakfast is the most profitable part of the day for American food sales.

More than 25 per cent of all US sales come from core breakfast items, such as the Egg McMuffin, the Hot Cake (a pancake), the Sausage Biscuit (a muffin sandwich with sausage and cheese), swilled down with “posh” premium roast coffee, introduced last year.

One of the key reasons for the success of McDonald’s breakfasts is the company’s decision to allow outlets to introduce a dollar breakfast, in which items such as a McMuffin could be bought for as little as a dollar. That flexibility has been offered for a year.

A spokesman said that the healthier fruit and walnut salad, recently repackaged, was also popular.

Hoping to cash in on a new-found love of a fast-food breakfast, the California-based International House of Pancakes – Ihop to its fans – seized control yesterday of Applebee’s, a rival restaurant chain with 2,000 outlets across America, for $1.9 billion (£933 million). Ihop – home of the Classic American Icon breakfast, comprising three eggs, ham, sausage or bacon with three buttermilk pancakes – is hoping to introduce some of its own ranges into Applebee’s. The pancake specialist has 1,319 restaurants across the US, Canada and Mexico.

It is not just Americans who have converted to the fast-food breakfast. According to McDonald’s, a key reason for the group’s surge in global sales has been the success of the Egg and Sausage McMuffin introduced to the Chinese in March. Chinese sales helped to spur a 10.8 per cent revenue increase for the company across Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa during the second quarter of the year. In Europe, smaller burgers and chicken wraps helped to give a 7.8 per cent sales gain over the same period.

In 2003, McDonald’s tried to address anxieties on both sides of the Atlantic about obesity by introducing new food ranges and launching a marketing campaign trumpeting those healthier ranges. That move – and the closure of 700 restaurants to trim costs – has paid off. Shares in the company have risen 17 per cent this year, with McDonald’s benefiting from 50 consecutive months of like-for-like sales growth.

Yesterday, the fast-food giant unveiled to Wall Street better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter of the year. In restaurants that have been open for at least 13 months, global sales rose 7.4 per cent, the best rise for three years. In America like-for-like sales jumped 5 per cent.

Applebee and Ihop have struggled in comparison. Both have changed their menus, in an effort to attract a more up-market clientele, and both have raised their prices. It has helped Ihop to a degree: last week, it said that like-for-like sales were 2.5 per cent higher during the second quarter of 2007, compared with the previous year. Applebee has had no such luck: in February it put itself up for sale and sales have fallen more than 7 per cent this year.

McDonald’s said that it expected to post a net loss of 60 cents a share for the second quarter after assuming a one-off charge relating to the cost of selling operations in Latin America. In April, the group said that it would sell about 1,600 restaurants in Latin America and the Caribbean to a franchisee.

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax