Morning meal traffic was up about 2% per year at restaurants during the past five years, according to NPD Group, accounting for nearly 60% of the industry's traffic growth. "Breakfast has been and is projected to continue to be a bright spot for the restaurant industry," says Bonnie Riggs, NPD's restaurant industry analyst. Benefits include convenience and price compared to other restaurant meals, she says. In recent months, several fast-food chains -- Subway, Wendy's and Burger King are notable -- have either added breakfast service or expanded their options, Lisa Jennings reports. One reason for this, …

Wal-Mart says it is going to work with the City of Chicago to build several dozen stores of varying size and format over the next five years as a thrust into the lucrative urban markets it had heretofore largely left to others. UBS Securities Neil Currie has estimated that Wal-Mart could add about $80 billion in sales if it achieved a market share in 50 urban areas roughly equal to its share in non-urban markets, Matthew Boyle reports. Labor unions and community activists have battled Wal-Mart's attempts thus far to enter urban markets like New York and Chicago …

John Heilemann starts his "The Power Grid" column by eviscerating Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) for proclaiming that BP CEO Tony Hayward would be sliced and diced when he appeared before the House subcommittee he chairs. Then he weighs in on the "preening and witless blustering" of his colleagues at the hearing the next day, only to be outdone by the "unfathomable stupidity" of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) for apologizing to Hayward (and then retracting it.") Hayward himself, who has been roasted to burnt crisp elsewhere (Brandchannel's Shirley Brady leads her roundup of the news this …

Arielle Levin Becker reports that there's nothing existential about the impact of cartoon characters on children's attitudes toward the food they eat. It's quite cut and dried, in fact: Researchers at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University find that putting characters such as Dora the Explorer or Scooby Doo on food packaging can make children think the food inside tastes better than the same food packaged without the characters. Forty children aged 3 to 6 were each given two samples of graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks and baby carrots. They were asked whether …

If you haven't met Phineas and Ferb yet, you soon will. The offbeat Disney Channel characters are about to get "full marketing treatment" from the organization, including a merchandise line with more than 200 items from boxer shorts to boxes of macaroni, as well as a full-length TV film. "Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension," will be out next summer. Dawn C. Chmielewski reports that discussions to round the edges of the angular characters' features so that they'd be more in line with traditional Disney 'toons were quelled by decisive top management. "I said, 'No,' " says …