Company: Panera Bread

Panera Bread Company, together with its subsidiaries, owns, operates, and franchises retail bakery-cafes in the United States and Canada. Its bakery-cafes offer fresh baked goods, sandwiches, soups, salads, and custom roasted coffees, and other complementary products, as well as provide catering services under the Panera Catering name. The company also provides fresh dough, produce, tuna, and cream cheese items, as well as sweet goods items through its company-owned and franchise-operated bakery-cafes. As of December 27, 2011, it operated 740 company-owned bakery-cafes and 801 franchised bakery-cafes under the Panera Bread, Saint Louis Bread Co., and Paradise Bakery & Cafe names. The company was founded in 1981 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri.Panera Breads goal is to provide nourishing fast food in a sit down atmosphere.

Key Issues:

Pros: Lots of room for expansion company owned stores and franchises

Free wi-fi, meeting rooms

Cons: branding

Key Competitors:

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Einstein Noah Restaurant, Starbucks, Specialty Eateries

Problem and Opportunity: The problem I am going to focus on is branding. While everyone, no matter social status, education or nationality has heard of McDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not everyone has head of Panera. Panera Bread is in the bigger cities and needs to get their name out there, like its competitors.

Alternative Solutions: Several solutions to branding would be expanding, advertising, expanded catering and community involvement.

Selected Solution: The solution I would like to focus on is expanding. Its great to be able to have several locations in big cities such as Houston or Dallas but in smaller towns they have no options but the bakery at the local grocery store. If Panera Bread could offer selections at the grocery store, like California Pizza Kitchen and TGIFridays, then at least they could get their name out there until actual expansion into that community was possible. The disadvantage would be time and cost.

Implementation/Recommendations: I would expect a stepwise expansion from grocery store to actual location would be a good start. It would help to get involved in the community targeted for expansion, get the name recognition out there and offer free samples. People go to Costco just for the free samples, so why not have a person doing just that, samples, coupons, discounts. Panera really needs to push the made to order aspect as well as the fresh ingredients if it wants to solidly compete with companies like Chipolte. Offering drive thru service and smaller stores instead of a cookie cutter storefront would be an option, too. It would be nice is Panera would move into a community and cater its dcor to the surrounding environment and culture. As a comparison, the size and dcor of every Starbucks is different. Some have enough seating for a small army and some barely for two people, catering more to the drive thru aspect. If Panera Bread would be aware of the community they are moving into and address their store to reflect the environment, I would expect the results of expansion to increase branding and be very positive. In order for Panera to become a household name, they are going to have to spend money to make money. After all, I do love their cinnamon bagel with honey walnut cream cheese.

Assumptions: In order to make the assumptions I am regarding expansion, I am assuming there is no drastic downturn in the market, economy or general outlook by consumers.

http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/videos/Mgmt2007/Flash/Panera.htmlhttp://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=PNRA+Competitorshttp://www.restaurant.org/pdfs/education/studygroups/meg/201110_strategic_brand_audit.pdfhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panera_Bread april 17, 2012

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_16/b3980084.htm april 17, 2006