Arab News wrote in 2014 that queuing at restaurants to buy breakfast was customary in Jeddah. The meal it described included foul, balila, flatbread with zaatar, labneh, falafel, date jam, eggs and Arabic coffee. This was not a queue for a product launch. It belonged to the ordinary urban practice of obtaining the morning meal.
The hotel featured in the report introduced a year-round Saudi breakfast partly to reproduce that local experience for guests, serving it daily from 6 to 9:30 a.m. What was being recreated was not only a menu. Choosing food and waiting one’s turn were treated as part of how breakfast in Jeddah was encountered.