Panera Bread Essay

Panera Bread Company is a national bakery-cafe with over 1,000 company-operated and franchise locations across the United States. The chain bakery and sit in café restaurants of Panera Bread Company offer a variety of products including; breads, sandwiches, soups, salads, and other bakery items for customers that the company deemed within their strategy to be “urban workers and suburban dwellers.” In a detailed analysis and case study of Panera Bread Company, it is important to recognize information regarding the past performance, market and industry comparison with a detailed SWAT analysis, and the competing rivals and pressures that the competition places on Panera Bread Company. With this pertinent and substantial information, Panera Bread

Headquartered out of Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, Panera originally was known to the public as St. Louis Bread Company. However, in 1993, Au Bon Pain Co. purchased the small Saint Louis Bread Company of just 20 bakery-cafés in the immediate and surrounding areas of St. Louis. In the years to follow, Panera Bread Company, as we know it today, began to develop its current image through extensive studies of fast food chain restaurants nationwide and endured an extensive overhaul of its customer atmosphere and strategic vision alike. The owners of the company studied the then current leaders of the industry, such as Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell, and determined that a new dining experience would be the most plausible way to attract new consumers and grow the company into a national leader. The organizational leaders did this by conjuring up the strategic vision by creating “a specialty café anchored by an authentic, fresh-dough, artisan bakery and upscale quick-service menu selections.” Essentially, the owners decided that they would offer to the public all the commodities of a normal fast food chain such as