Panera Bread Mission Statement

Panera Bread's mission is to create high-quality food with value in a fast casual dining environment that is healthy and enjoyable for everyone to experience. The company values customers need and wants through their marketing. We can see the company's value for the customer through the marketing mix of Panera Bread in product, pricing, promotion, and place.

Panera Bread was founded in 1987 by Ken Rosenthal. Before it became Panera Bread, it was known in the St. Louis area as St. Louis Bread Company. The first location opened in Kirkwood, Missouri and throughout the early years it expanded to 20 different locations and was known as the bakery-café. In 1993 Au Bon Pan purchased St. Louis Bread Company. Au Bu Pan was an established company

in the east coast of the United States and internationally throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. By 1999 Au Bon Pan sold its other chains and kept only St. Louis Bread Company. At this point in time St. Louis Bread Company changed its name to Panera Bread and began to expand as a national restaurant. Currently, Panera Bread has 2000 bakery-cafes in 46 states and about 20 facilities that deliver fresh dough to the bakery-cafes every day. In St. Louis it still operates under the name St. Louis Bread Company and has 101 locations in the metropolitan area.
The mission statement of Panera Bread is A loaf of bread in every arm.

This statement shows that the company values the customer and wants to make sure that it can provide quality and good food for all customers. The customer-perceived value Panera wants to achieve is that it can provide high-quality food that is healthy and delicious and that it is priced reasonable. Panera understands the important of “marketing strategy – the marketing logic by which the company hopes to create this customer value and achieve those profitable relationships.” (Kotler and Armstrong, 72) The company sets itself apart from other competitors through their healthy marketing technique to provide healthy and quality food for all customers. They believe that serving food that they would feed their own families can provide the highest value a customer can want. In 2004 the company introduced chicken raised without antibiotics and many of the investors believed that this was the wrong move. The trade off to buy the more expensive chicken was to prove that it wanted the highest quality poultry to serve its customer. In 2005 the company committed to removing all artificial trans-fat, again showing that it wants to serve only healthy and delicious meals. In 2010 the company was the first national restaurant to display calorie information on its menu. This provided customer more information on how healthy they can be with the choices they were given. It also gave the company a chance to show how

quality food can be made even with low calorie. In 2014 the company committed to removing all artificial colors, sweeteners, flavors, and preservatives by 2016.
The demographic segmentation of Panera shows that it is popular among customers that are older from age 45 years old to 65+ years old. This would make sense and correlates to how they market their healthy and quality food. As the population in the United States becomes older and more educated they will want to make sure that they consume food that is healthy and less fattening. In the beneficial segmentation, we know that Panera is convenient because it provides fast and casual dining experience. The restaurant is not like a fast food place but has a higher quality ambiance to it and they also provide free WiFi for customers to use. By offering free WiFi this brings customers in to enjoy the atmosphere while working and by having customers come in they have a chance that the customer will spend money in their restaurant. This example is how customer satisfaction can help a company build customer value and achieve profitable relationships. Another beneficial segmentation is the health factor that Panera markets to the consumers.
As Panera continues to improve its marketing strategy it can begin to plan the details of the marketing mix.

The four variables that make up marketing mix are product, price, promotion, and place. The product that Panera Bread offers are a variety of high-quality food that ranges from Signature Panini, Signature Sandwiches, Bagels/Pastries, Soups, Pastas, Salads, and different drinks. The price of Panera is in the area of the fast casual dining that ranges from $8 to $15 for an order. It is higher than the normal fast food places because it creates a welcoming atmosphere that encourages customers to dine in and have its food made with high-quality ingredients. They also have a different soup every day on the menu and the customers can do a "You Pick Two". This is where the customers can choose two half portions of salads, sandwiches, paninis, soups, mac & cheese, or flatbread. With all orders, the customers can also choose to have bread, chips or an apple. Promotion at Panera is done by using the percentage of sales method. In 2015 Panera had total revenue of 2.3 billion in sale and their marketing spend was 2.6% of it. That is equivalent to around 61.3M in marketing spend. About 51% of the spend goes towards television and 32% of it goes towards outdoor marketing like billboards or events. The company also offers a rewards program called MyPanera for customers to earn reward points as this helps bring customers back to spend money and earn more points to use towards their

purchases. They are also currently implementing Panera 2.0 which is a new system to be used in all stores where customers can come in and make orders on a screen/tablet and convenience of having more variety of payment options. The place Panera makes all their food are at their restaurants. They work on making the environment welcoming for customers to dine inside and they are also working on having a drive through for customer convenience. They also have 22 fresh dough facilities where they make sure every day fresh dough comes to each restaurant to be used.
Direct competitors of Panera Bread include Starbucks, Chipotle, and Einstein’s Bagel. Starbucks is the biggest competition for Panera because it recently acquired the bakery chain called La Boulange to try and pull in customers for dine-ins. Starbucks currently has over 19,000 store locations globally and with the large scale of operations compared to Panera it can start to attract more customers during lunch. Panera has only 2000 locations and only within the United States, while Starbucks has around 4000 locations just in the United States. Chipotle is also a fast casual dining place that also offers high-quality food like burritos, salad bowls, and tacos. The company has a very simple menu choice for the customers and lets the customers watch their food made as they have the option to choose ingredients. Einstein's Bagel has a smaller operation compared to Panera and they are more focused on a smaller menu but also have a variety of food to choose from bagels, coffee, cookies, and muffin. In terms of quality Panera has Einstein’s beaten because Panera focuses on quality and service getting orders correct for the customer and if not they will give it to the customer for free.
Looking at a SWOT analysis of Panera can help "match the company's strengths to attractive opportunities in the environment while eliminating or overcoming the weaknesses and minimizing the threats." (Kotler and Armstrong, 78) Strengths that Panera has is that it currently has a very strong brand image within the United States. By using the percentage of sales method for the marketing budget it will have adequate marketing in relationship to how the company grows or shrinks. It is known for being the first fast casual dining restaurant that provides healthy and high-quality ingredients for customers to enjoy. Weaknesses that Panera has is that it only operates within the North American region and this gives them less revenue versus competitors like Starbucks. With a weakness, there are also opportunities for the company to expand outside of America and go international. With the implementation of Panera 2.0, it will help reduce cost for the company in direct labor which makes up a very large portion of cost for all companies. Reduction in direct labor can help improve its bottom line in the industrial margin. As more and more people are aware of eating healthy they are also additional sales that Panera can gain growing their revenue further. Threats for the fast dining restaurant business is that there are high and strong competitors that can steal market shares from Panera. Panera also relies on fresh dough to be delivered daily and if there happens to be an accident a few chains can be affected causing delay and losing sales for the day. As minimum wage increases that are a cost that affects the company's bottom line in the margin.
Marketing is essential for a business to succeed and as long as Panera maintains its high-quality relationship with high customer satisfaction it will continue to grow and beat its competitors. Beating competitors will also mean to be innovative with marketing and find ways to attract customers towards their business while maintaining customer satisfaction and giving them the value they want. Listening to customer’s feedback and continually improving the menu based on the feedback is important.