Recruitment Process For The Assistant Manager At Panera Essay

Panera Bread’s mission is to make great bread broadly available to consumers across the United States.

Panera Bread’s intention is “to make Panera Bread a nationally recognized brand name and to be the dominant restaurant operator in the specialty bakery-café segment.” Panera experienced competition from many numerous sources in its trade areas. Their competition was with specialty food, casual dining and quick service cafes, bakeries, and restaurant retailers, including national, regional, and locally owned. The competitive factors included location, environment, customer service, price, and quality of products. Panera learned from its competitors, none of its competitors had yet

The focal point of this is essay is none other than Panera Bread. Louis Kane and Ron Shaich established a bread kitchen bistro called Au Bon Pain Company Inc. in 1981. The organization developed and succeeded through the 1980's and 90's. Saint Louis Bread Company was purchased in 1993 by the association the company already had 20 different locations that covered vast areas of Saint Louis in the first place. Saint Louis Bread Company was at first established by Ken Rosenthal. In May 1999 Panera Bread ventured into a national eatery, Au Bon Pain Co. sold their different chains including Au Bon Pain, which is currently claimed by Compass Group North America. Panera moved its central command to another area in Richmond, Heights Missouri in 2000.

Expanding the target market of Panera Bread is a good growth opportunity for them. This can be achieved by product line (menu options) extension or by entering international market outside the American continent so as to increase their geographical coverage. In addition, Panera has an opportunity to get additional market and growth by adapting rapidly to changing market and customer preferences. They need to advertise and market themselves as a healthy option for eating out. Health oriented food or food that are low in calories, sugar, cholesterol, etc. is getting very important as people started becoming very health conscious and selective. Their effort to roll out new products with fresher ingredients such as antibiotic-free chicken needs to be further expanded. Recognizing the health risks associated with transfat, Panera had completely removed all transfat from its menu by 2006. Organic food, non GMO, etc. They could increase number of their franchises. A number of markets were still available for franchise development. The have opportunity in front of them to open more outlets, both company-owned and franchises. They could open within North America and mainly in areas where they are not present now, and those areas where the growth potential is good, like some of the suburban markets. Many good locations for fast casual dining options are available in many of the untapped areas. Panera has a good market opportunity outside the small urban niche where greater growth

Panera Bread has established itself as one of the most popular, fast growing “bakery-café” restaurants in the United States as well as in Canada. With 1,800 locations in 45 states, the franchise appears to be unstoppable. This in part is due to the superior customer service experience that keeps customers coming back time and time again. Just to give you an example, in 2012; the most recent year that data is available, Panera Bread brought in an astounding $2.13 billion in revenue, about $1 billion more than its revenue in 2008.

The recruiting process is implemented to find the best candidates for the position by reaching a large target population about the job opening. Permalco is struggling to find the right employees to fill the open positions within the organization and now they are narrowing the target search with will be difficult to find the right personnel for the position. The intensions of the recruiting process is to find many qualified applicants and narrow the search down by his/ her personality and qualifications in regards to the company’s standards. Permalco is going to face many challenges in the recruiting process by focusing more on females and minorities instead of considering every qualified applicant as a potential employee.

The Panera Bread Company is starting 2007 with unfinished goals and missed targets previously set and a review of their strategy is in order to continue their ongoing success. The company has grown substantially since its inception in the competitive restaurant industry; however, an aggressive target of 2,000 Panera Bread bakery-cafes will require a focused strategic plan. The company has a strong base with loyal customers who appreciate Panera’s unique dining atmosphere with a focus on quality products at a reasonable price. Panera will need to continue its market research and focus on environmental issues, which are an important core value. The opportunity for

Another organizational crisis arose in 1995 when efforts to expand the Saint Louis Bread chain in order to increase brand awareness backfired as consumers favored Saint Louis Bread over its parent company. To solve this conflict, new divisional presidents were created for each chain, and in 1999 Shaich convinced the board of directors to sell all the Au Bon Pain cafes and restructure the Saint Louis Bread chain under the name Panera Bread. Panera’s current organizational structure utilizes vertical integration, with 17 fresh dough facilities that deliver to 1,591 cafes and franchises (“Our History”). Upper level managers now make menu and pricing decisions and overlook the marketing, franchise, concept development, legal, technology, supply chain, and human resource departments (“Organizational Chart”). Lower level

“A loaf of bread in every arm” is the mission statement of Panera Bread Company (Vincelette & Fogarty, 2010, p.1). Panera started as a small bakery under the name Au Bon Pain and grew to one of the largest fast food service companies in the U.S. In 2008 they had the 5th overall rating in the restaurant industry. “Panera Bread is widely recognized for driving the nationwide trend for specialty breads” (Panera Bread, 2011).

Being a nationally recognized brand and a dominant in restaurant operations in the specialty bakery café segment and to expand broadly in the regional market is Panera’s strategy. And by giving high quality product Panera is following their strategy.

As mentioned in the case study, Panera Bread Company is known to be one of the leading bakery/café that offers freshly baked pastries and French inspired entrées across various states in the US. However in the recent years, Panera Bread faced a decrease in their usual high growth rate from 9.1% and 12.0% in the year 2000 to merely 0.2% and 0.5% of comparable sales and annualized unit volumes respectively.

This approach has been one of the main competitive advantages of the company that maintained its stores and cafes in a friendly and ambient atmosphere in various locations. The company did not start as a traditional fast food restaurant, but rather as a network of places where people could fulfill their natural instincts with healthy and freshly cooked food with a little higher than average price range. Panera Bread was one of the trend makers of casual-food restaurants, whose vision was entirely different from the typical model of public facilities. All of the locations shared a common design and menu that created a unique environment of the franchise. Moreover, in order to enable high-quality service, the executive team of the company decided to equip all of the bakery’s completely to be capable of making their own products directly to the spots. This fact allowed to reach a certain level of autonomy and reliability of the brand that always managed to deliver and provide the freshest and natural

The generic competitive strategy that Panera best fits is broad differentiation. This is primarily because Panera sought to be the first choice for patrons looking for fresh-baked goods, a sandwich, soup, a salad or a beverage in a pleasing environment. In this platform Panera has set their eyes on people who may not necessarily be looking for an expensive meal, but might also not want cheap, fast food but instead are looking for a fresh meal that can be enjoyed in a relaxing environment. In this Panera is looking for a

Among the crowded field of casual, quick-service restaurants in America, the distinctive blend of genuine artisan bread and a warm, comfortable atmosphere has given Panera Bread Company a golden opportunity to capture market share and reward shareholders through well-planned growth. With the objective of opening approximately 1,000 more bakery-cafes in the next three years, Panera Bread Company must make prudent strategy decisions about new store locations, supply-chain management and expanded offerings, all the while continuing its above-average earnings per share growth of at least 25 percent per year.

In regards to market segmentation I recommend that they keep continuing to do what they have implemented currently. With a wide variety of products available customers can chose anything they want, all at a fair price for the portion sizes being received. Place is currently working well for them, however, eventually they may need to look at expanding into other areas, depending on any developing competitors. As far as promotion, advertising is at a good number, but sales promotions could be a little higher to draw in the new customers. “My Panera” is an amazing rewards program that keeps the customers coming back, so keep up with that. Overall Panera Bread has a good market segmentation, only a couple things to look into changing in the future.