Many of the Dayton area’s McDonald’s restaurants have started serving breakfast after midnight.

“McDonald’s is taking aim at quick-service restaurants’ last unconquered frontier: late night sales,” according to BurgerBusiness.com. “And it is doing so by treating the time from midnight to 5 a.m. as an early-breakfast opportunity rather than a late-dinner or snack period.”

The move comes as McDonald’s has been forced to share the breakfast market with more of its fast-food competitors. Both Subway and Taco Bell have launched breakfast menus in recent years, and Wendy’s has been testing the concept.

McDonald’s spokeswoman Leslie Holbrook said McDonald’s restaurants in the Dayton and Columbus markets that would typically start selling breakfast items at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. are now cooking up items such as Egg McMuffins, Sausage McMuffins, hotcakes with sausage, breakfast burritos, fruit and maple oatmeal, hash browns, juice and coffee starting at midnight. No items from the limited regular menu that McDonald’s restaurants serve after midnight have been dropped, so diners will have the choice of ordering off the limited regular menu or from the special breakfast menu during the early-morning hours, Holbrook said.

The limited breakfast menu is available until 5 a.m., when all restaurants switch to the full breakfast menu. The full breakfast menu is then served until 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday and until 11 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Holbrook said.

The Cincinnati-area McDonald’s — which include locations in the Hamilton, Middletown and Lebanon areas — are not participating in the Breakfast After Midnight program, but Holbrook said extending the program beyond the Dayton and Columbus test markets “is possible in the future.”