Panera Bread Wants to Be Everywhere. Panera’s move into dinner could attract new business. In recent months, Panera Bread has announced several new initiatives aimed at expanding its reach-efforts which will continue to unfold as Panera works to get into more locations and serve more customers at more occasions.

“This brand comes with an incredibly high emotional relationship with our target customers,” says Dan Wegiel, the company’s EVP and chief growth and strategy officer. “That’s something that is a massive asset for us and we wish to have them.”

Using a wide appeal among consumers and deep relevance among loyal fans, Panera executives see a lot of runway for future expansion and an abundance of opportunities to further ingrain the company into customers’ daily lives.

Most of the brand’s recent evolution has occurred since JAB Holding Company acquired Panera in 2017 for $7.5 billion. Ever since then, rapid-casual giant makes big news: In April, it presented a new slate of breakfast menu items targeted at winning share from competitors who frequently offer frozen, microwaved food items during the breakfast daypart. That effort included a revamped coffee program that mirrors the standard and technology available at big coffee houses. In June, the company launched an evaluation of a dinner menu that includes artisan flatbreads, bowls and hearty side stuff like sweet potato mash. And simply in late August, panera bread near me now turned more heads because it finally embraced third-party delivery partners after many years of adhering to its in-house delivery program.

So, what exactly do the collective moves inform us about where Panera goes?

“The strategic thread that holds all of the things together is it: this brand includes a very unique opportunity inside our minds within the food and restaurant space to possess broad relevance to a fairly broad group of target customers,” Wegiel says. “It’s one of many few brands that operates across all dayparts, all week parts and multiple channels of access.”

While those changes came after JAB’s acquisition, he says, the European conglomerate empowered those efforts, not mandated them.

“JAB has a very explicit and clear philosophy that they believe individual companies and brands really should shape their destiny and destination,” he says. “Unlike a few other investment firms they don’t come in with a playbook and say here’s ways to create value or say here’s the portfolio and here’s where we could create synergies …That’s very much the antithesis of how they operate.”

Panera and third-party delivery? It fits the fast casual’s goal to satisfy customers everywhere.

Still, Panera has experienced been able to lean on the expertise of sister brands under the JAB umbrella-and the other way round. The business owns several coffee concepts, including Peet’s Coffee and Caribou Coffee. Which had been useful when researching approaches to revamps Panera’s coffee offerings, Wegiel says. However, JAB urged Panera to boost its self-branded coffees, not adopt the banner of some other JAB brand.

Advancing, Panera wants to create more access points in to the brand. To that particular end, the business will expand traditional and nontraditional stores. Wegiel wouldn’t share specific store growth projections but says there is “ample room” to incorporate both international and domestic units. Likewise, Panera goes deeper on its lines of consumer packaged goods. Customers can currently find salad dressings, soups, breads, and coffee in grocery store aisles. However the brand thinks it could expand both the amount of products and the amount of distribution points.

“CPG in our minds could be a significant lever of brand new growth,” he says. “I think we’re just scratching the outer lining.”

Panera is definitely a holdout in terms of the third-party delivery services which have transformed much of the restaurant space. The company has offered in-house delivery for a long time. But in late August, the chain announced new partnerships with DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats that expanded delivery choices across 1,600 of the 2,300 or so stores. The manufacturer believes adopting those services can help recruit new business.

“We’ve experienced delivery for the better element of five years,” Weigel says. “We realized and heard from your aggregators that there was an entire segment of customers that wanted Panera, but their primary source or delivery was the aggregators so we weren’t there.”

Whether in delivery, a reimagined breakfast menu or CPG options, Panera is trying to reach customers across multiple dayparts and occasions.

“We know there’s tremendous interest in the manufacturer, some of which is very pent up,” Weigel says. “There are areas consumers want us where we’re not.”

“While they might be able to possess some incremental business at dinner time, it’s never going to be overpowering. Once these brand identities are established and known, it just takes forever to maneuver the needle.” – John Gordon, principal and founder of Pacific Management Consulting Group.

While Panera accelerates change, don’t expect any wholesale transformation. The organization intends to stay with its core brand identity that concentrates on clean ingredients and wellness, as well as keeping its more indulgent bakery and menu items.

“Wellness is not only about maintaining a healthy diet. It plays a role … Somebody who is trying to consume well is generally trying to balance things,” Wegiel says. “We offer optionality because wellness is about completeness within the balance of fulfillment.”

A few of Panera’s moves-such as the reimagined breakfast and coffee program-look more routine than transformational to John Gordon, principal and founding father of Pacific Management Consulting Group.

“Every good operator needs to be doing that,” he says.

He views Panera’s flirtation with dinner, though, as a bolder move. He recalled the brand’s 2006 introduction in the Crispani, a handmade pizza product available only inside the evenings. That offering was designed to push the manufacturer further into the dinner daypart but low sales caused Panera to pull the pizzas in 2008.

“It’s just tough because Panera was known but still is regarded as a soup, salad, sandwich and breakfast place,” Gordon says. “Dinner is really a substantial daypart for them, however, not the top of mind daypart.”

To ramp up evening sales, he believes Panera must launch a flagship dinner product. But he thinks the brand’s bakery-cafe identity will always be intact.

“While they could possibly get some incremental business at dinner time, it’s never going to be overpowering,” he says. “Once these brand identities are established and known, it just takes forever to maneuver the needle.”

Just like all privately owned concepts, Panera’s financial performance is difficult to ascertain since its purchase by JAB. But Gordon says the brand still looks strong. It’s a successful operator having a widespread appeal. And Panera enjoys white ypbonx to cultivate its footprint domestically and internationally.

“They have solidified their position in america during the last ten years without a doubt,” he says. “I have a lot of respect for Panera as an operator. In many different restaurant brand surveys, Panera turns up very high and it has an extremely strong company operation and franchisee operation.”

The post Panera Bread Locations Near Me – Discover New Skills.. appeared first on KBCluckywinner.