What Are The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Breadtalk

For this discussion, I have chosen a company that’s a lunchtime favorite in my office—Panera Bread Company, a steadily-growing national restaurant chain headquartered in Sunset Hills, Missouri. Ron Shaich, the creator of Panera Bread, joined with partner Louis Kane, the founder of the bakery-café chain Au Bon Pain Co., Inc. (ABP). In addition to ABP, Mr. Shaich started a “fast casual” sandwich shop that he eventually named Panera Bread, and once ABP was sold in 1999, Mr. Shaich focused on growing the Panera Bread brand. Within the next 15 years, Panera Bread practiced a slow but steady growth pattern and there are now more in 2,300 Paneras in the United States (Panera Bread Company, 2017).

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.

A key aspect of Panera Bread’s business that protects the company from direct competition in the fast food industry is their product niche, artisan fast food. Fast food chains are often criticized for offering unhealthy foods. But, Panera Bread focuses on a higher nutritional value in their products. Dine in restaurants are very susceptible to drops in consumer spending, so Panera Bread’s

1) The Big Three firms, Kellogg, General Mills, and Philip Morris, formed practically an oligopoly in the RTE cereal market. Their price and cost levels moved in lockstep, following signals sent mostly by the biggest player, Kellogg, while their tactics could be used against outside competition, as suggested in the scenario below. Although RTE cereal is a basic food item and production technology stabilized for about half century, the industry had effective barriers to entry. The competition between incumbents was friendly while most of the inputs came from a perfectly competitive market, agriculture. Major customers, the food stores, were coopted in perpetuating barriers to entry in the form of shelf space “slotting”.

Breadsmith is a private-parent owned company which is head quartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Breadsmith is a franchise structured company. They support quality of their stores over the quantity of their franchise stores. Breadsmith has over 35 locations across the United States. Breadsmith offers a large selection of breads and pastry goods. There was an article about Breadsmith that was published in 2013, which talks about their philosophy of why and how they make their bread the way they do. Their freshly baked bread was inspired when the founder of the company, Dan Sterling, went on a visit to Europe and experienced the quality taste of the

Introducing a new product to the market is a very risky operation. Not only is it risky but it takes time, effort and money. In order for a product to be successful, it had to fully undergo the product life cycle. Kellogg’s has an advantage when it comes to the breakfast market as it holds the biggest market share. After providing the British public with breakfast for years, it most certainly has a larger customer loyalty base. The strong brand makes it easy for product launching as the public are already familiar with the brand. However, introducing a new product comes with its challenges and risks. Looking at the ratios, Kellogg’s has a current ratio to date of 1:1.1 . This in financial terms rings alarm bells as it shows that the company will struggle to pay its short term obligations. Kellogg’s however can operate on a low current test ratio as it has a good long term revenues coming into the business. This means that it is possible to borrow on this basis to meet its current obligation. After calculating the net present value, which gave a positive NPV of £38450million, I move that we go ahead with the introduction of a new product. In traducing a new product is a sign of innovation and growth on the part of the competitors. In order for a new product to be introduced to the market, Kellogg’s will have to spend money on the actual product, the marketing side of

Summary statement of the problem: The Panera Bread Company has made a name for itself by offering quality, nutritious meals to its customers. You can eat at Panera Bread without worrying if you are getting a healthy, nutritious meal. With today’s health conscious society this has served the company well. With the rise in other health food type restaurants, the question arises is Panera Bread’s current strategy enough to keep them on top? In order to continue to succeed, Panera Bread needs to branch out into the foreign markets, add some key

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.

Panera Bread is considered to be one of the U.S. most successful fast-casual restaurants. The company is one of the revolution makers in the industry of fast food, which managed to transform the traditional image and perception of to-go products that are available at an acceptable price on the market. As its initial founding company was established in 1981, Panera Bread managed to gain up to 4.5 billion USD in sales by the year of 2015, whereas the average sales per one store made up to 2.5 million USD annually (Thompson). Nevertheless, the company that once managed to upgrade bread and pastry into a trend of fast and healthy eating, today is struggling with massive competition on the fast food market. Its previous strategic strengths now became a burden that stops innovation and creativity and does not

The strategic issue that Panera faces is how to make great bread broadly available to consumers across the United States.

Panera bread’s growth strategy was to capitalize on Panera’s market potential by opening both company-owned and franchised Panera Bread locations as fast as was prudent (A. A. Thompson). Panera Bread work closely with franchised branches in order for the company to broaden its market penetration (A. A. Thompson). Panera Bread has taken the appropriate measures to gain a competitive advantage to make franchising a successful market for the company to enter. Considering Panera Bread Company keeps interaction with the franchised branches to ensure success gives them the upper hand to ensure continued success.

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

Subway Sandwich, as presented in the Case Study presented in the Marketing Management MGT 551 class, is an undisputed market leader in a segment that is “firmly established as a nationwide food item for which there is plenty of room in all areas” (University of Phoenix, 2008). However, with a growing competition, changing consumer trends and increased product specialization, Subway’s real strategic marketing challenge is to be able to develop and maintain a differential advantage while sustaining sales growths and profitability.

Competition is relatively high in the food and beverage industry in Malaysia. Secret Recipe competition is relatively high in the market as the rivalry not only from confectionery cake shop but also come from café such as Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and Dome and so on. Those well-established competitors are providing variety of standard and delicious foods to its customers, and

General Mills, as one of the Big Three companies that focused on diversification of consumer goods on cereal division, restaurant chains and packaged consumer foods. In 1994, the cereal industry was profitable and had been one of the most concentrated industries overall historically, and the big Three company had a dominant position in this industry. However, the problem was although the high profitability attracted fewer entry company due to the high entry barrier restrained by joint monopoly of the Big Three, they were facing the threat of private label companies which grew fast in market share by sales and volume. Therefore, what is General Mills strategy to increase revenue while dealing with the threat of private labels. This is a critical issue because General Mills need measure the trade-offs among strategies, and this determines whether General Mills would still be one of the top players in terms of market shares in the industry.