Reese's Launches New Breakfast-y Snack Cake

Businesses often find themselves asking, How can we sell more of what we’re selling? For food brands, recently, a big answer has been, Let’s infiltrate breakfast! Fast-food chains like McDonald’s and Wendy’s have been increasingly battling over the breakfast hours. In a headline-grabbing movie, Kraft renamed its Macaroni & Cheese Dinner to Macaroni & Cheese Breakfast (because what is time?) And, now, Reese’s is offering up its own a.m. idea: peanut butter and chocolate snack cakes.

As if Reese’s Puffs cereal wasn’t already candifying breakfast enough, Reese’s is now sidestepping the traditional formality of cereal altogether and appealing to the “coffee cake has coffee in its name so we can eat it for breakfast” crowd.

Reese’s Snack Cakes are billed as “a first-of-its-kind” product that gives “Reese’s fans permission to have cake as a mid-morning snack whenever they want.” Frankly, as someone who knows a thing or two about tearing through a box of doughnuts, I didn’t realize I needed Reese’s permission to start my day on a sugar high, but fine: I appreciate the brand embracing my personal freedoms.

“We wanted to create the perfect treat for Reese’s fans to satisfy that mid-morning sweet tooth,” Mike Orr, Snacks brand manager, said in the announcement. “We know that sometimes you just don’t want to wait until lunch—that’s how Reese’s Snack Cakes were born!” The brand also cited “research” showing that 83 percent of people have eaten dessert before noon in the past month.

In Reese’s defense (because everyone has the right to an attorney), the peanut butter purveyors aren’t necessarily envisioning a family breakfast where mom dutifully lays out Reese’s Snack Cakes to the whole family. Instead, this option is angled towards the grab-and-go crowd: The “soft baked chocolate cakes topped with Reese’s peanut butter crème covered in smooth real milk chocolate” will arrive in two-cake packages sold in convenience stores nationwide.

And unlike Kraft’s rebranded mac and cheese, the word “breakfast” doesn’t appear anywhere on the front of the new snack cakes’ labels. It’s almost like these are normal dessert snack cakes but Reese’s is pitching them as good for breakfast to encourage you to eat more of them.

If you like the idea of being manipulated to eat chocolate and peanut butter in the morning, Reese’s Snack Cakes are set to hit shelves this December.