Panera Bread Case Study

Case 3 – Panera Bread. Panera Bread is a quickly expanding bakery-café with 1,493 company owned and franchised operated bakery-cafés in 40 states and the District of Columbia and Ontario Canada by mid-2011. Under the names Panera Bread, Saint Louis Bread Company and Paradise Bakery & Café reported revenue of $1.5 billion with average sales of $2.2 million per store location and an average of 6 million customers system wide each week. 1. Panera Bread’s strategy is to be a premium specialty bakery and café experience. The concept is a mix between fast food and casual dining, also known as fast-casual. Their objective is for customers to view dining at panera as a good value, high quality food at a reasonable price. Their strategic approach to keep customers returning is providing distinctive menu items, a comfortable café design with WI-FI, operating systems. They are targeting people who work in cities and people who live in the suburbs. They have had locations in busy shopping areas making some of the newer units drive-thru as well as remodeling other units to provide drive-thru service. Another strategy is to continue growing by opening both company and franchise owned stores. Panera Bread’s competitive strategy is the broad differentiation strategy through meals, service and cost. They seek to provide and a menu of fresh baked goods, made to order sandwiches, light entrees, soup, salad and cafe type beverages. The menu is regularly revised in order to keep their customers coming in regularly, as well as changing to reflect the season. They strive to maintain a comfortable atmosphere that has the feel of a warm community gathering place. They compete by trying to appeal to the customer during breakfast, lunch, dinner, morning and afternoon break times, light evening meals and take out. Panera focuses on the whole dining experience as well as low prices. They believe that a good value will encourage customers to make frequent