Management was confident that Panera Breads attractive menu and the dining ambiance of its bakerycafs provided significant growth opportunity, despite the fiercely competitive nature of the restaurant industry. Panera Bread competed with specialty food, casual dining and quick service restaurant retailers including national, regional and locally owned restaurants. Its closest competitors were restaurants in the so-called fast casual restaurant category. Fast casual restaurants filled the gap betweeen fast-food and casual, full table service dining . A fast casual restaurant provided quick-service dining (much like fast-food enterprises) but were distinguished by enticing menus, higher food quality, and more inviting dining environments; typical meal costs per guest were in the $7-$12 range.
PANERA BREAD Current Situation Panera Bread Company is a leader in the easy casual restaurant industry with multiple café-bakeries located in 36 states, of the United States. Panera operates under the banner of Panera and Saint Louis Bread Company. Almost 400 of its 1,027 bakeries are company-operated and the remainders are franchisees. Panera Bread’s core competencies are in their market niche, offering a premium specialty bakery and café experience to suburban and urban residents. Panera’s focus is offering their customers with better than their rivals, making the dining experience so attractive to their customers will pass up their competitors in outlets of other easy casual restaurants to dine at the nearest Panera Bread A strategic issues is substitutes and threats of substitutes in Panera Bread Company’s distinctive competencies, their menu.
Eventually in 1951 john opened his first small bakery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne selling bread. In the early 70’s they entered into Scotland, Yorkshire and Manchester. Now they own over 1,500 shops, selling not only bread but a variety of bakery products. Greggs is now a growing phenomenon with an increasing number of stores. Greggs now have more stores in Britain than major food outlets e.g.
Introduction Mission and vision Panera Bread Company’s mission intent was to make great bread broadly available to consumers across the United States. The vision was to create a specialty café anchored by an authentic, fresh-dough artisan bakery and upscale quick-service menu selections. Business model Management’s long-term objective and strategic intent was to make Panera Bread a nationally recognized brand name and to be the dominant restaurant operator in the specialty bakery-café segment. The company was trying to succeed by “being better than the guys across the street” and making the experience of dining at Panera so attractive that customers would be willing to pass by the outlets of other fast-casual restaurant competitors to dine at a nearby Panera Bread bakery-café. Panera’s target market was urban workers and suburban dwellers looking for a quick- service meal and a more aesthetically pleasing dining experience than that offered by traditional fast food restaurants.
And other incentives such as their reputation of affordable prices will only strengthen their position further. The company holds the largest market share in the grocery market in the UK. Tesco's innovation such as the club cards and attitudes towards its workforce has made it very successful over the years. "The UK's largest retailer accounted for 30.7% of UK grocery sales in the 12 weeks to 28 December" (Just-Food, 2009). Tesco have also strengthened in its use of technology.
Brazo 1. Is Cheddar’s an attractive investment? Did Brazos underpay, overpay or get it just right in their initial investment? The proposed LBO deal of Cheddar’s is an attractive investment for Brazos because it fits into Brazos’ “sweet spot”- a reasonable priced company with solid cash flow and good management. Cheddar’s had always been profitable through that it had ever closed a company-owned store and had shown steady increases in sales and customer counts over time.
In the restaurant business, the fast casual segment is definitely on the rise. People do not have a lot of money right now, but they still want to eat out and get good food and service. At the fore of this growth in fast casual dining, are two American restaurants that are doing extremely well, even in the current recession. These restaurants are Applebee’s and Chili’s. Based in the southern United States, both of these restaurants are extremely well known, and the similarities they have are part of the reason.
In this case, delicious handcrafted bread arriving fresh daily, served in an inviting atmosphere is the company’s competitive advantage and core competency. SWOT Analysis Strengths - Repeat customers, learning curve, word-of-mouth, fresh, quality food, rapid market penetration, economies of scale, customer service, good atmosphere Weaknesses - leased land, off-site dough preparation and delivery, many untapped markets, no sustainable competitive advantage, unclear strategic direction, unfavorable financial trends Opportunities – catering, national focus on health, dinner crowd, global sales Threats – bad economy, high gas prices, highly competitive industry Panera Bread’s closest rivals include: Atlanta Bread Company, Au Bon Pain, Chipotle, and Starbucks. These restaurants are also in the fast-casual dining segment of the industry. Like Starbucks, Panera Bread hopes to convey a casual, friendly atmosphere for people to “chill out” and enjoy the Wi-Fi and good times with friends. While these are the closest rivals, Panera must also compete with casual dining restaurants, fast- food places and any number of
Valuable- Panera’s menu options are critical to its success because it offers high quality food at a lower price, and customers can enjoy it without waiting too long. The food is also considered organic this lifts the image of the company as there has been a lot of campaigns that encourage eating healthy Rare- the quickness of Panera’s food is one that can be hard to find in similar restaurants. Their bread is almost always ready to be served .The bakery industry however is not rare and unique. Other foods offered alongside
The company refers to its employees as partners and a lot of respect is given to them as compared to other coffee stores. They were also offered stock options which resulted in 80%-90% of employment satisfaction. Its revenues came from different sources which accounted to the total revenue of the company. The different sources were domestic retail store licensing, North American food industry which included airlines, hotels, restaurants and other like. One of the other factors I though resulted in great success of Starbuck was the distribution chain.