Maintaining Leadership Position in the Quick-Casual Restaurant Sector: the case of Panera Bread
Market leadership and survival is among the most sought-after goals of every Company particularly those that operate in a dynamic and competitive business environment. Considering the presence of various global trends affecting companies, it is but necessary to come up and maintain a business feature that serves as an ultimate advantage. Panera Bread, one of the quickly expanding bakery-café across America is unquestionably performing at its best and can be considered as successful. This is due to its competitive product-service features that are rooted on its commitment to advocate its corporate mission – “A loaf of bread in every arm”. The Company’s success is credited on its unique product offerings (i.e. the Bakery Menu – freshly baked breads, bagels, baked egg soufflés and pastries and sweets and the Café Menu – sandwiches, soups, hand-tossed salads, beverages and the Panera Kids™ menu), highly qualified and trained bakers and other workers that maintain a quality bakery-café operations, the café design, and strategic locations of its cafes. Practically, the Company has established its competitive advantages against its rivals in the casual restaurant sector. The management and its leaders just need to focus on maintaining and improving its existing core competencies by paying particular attention on emerging trends in the restaurant industry, customer trends and satisfaction, and overall service quality.
Indeed, Panera Bread is an industry leader in quick-casual restaurant sector. In order to maintain this corporate standing, the management should create strategies that will address the emerging trends in the niche market such as customers’ demand on better quality food, better service, and better food safety; innovations in food preparation and service; the coming out of one-product concept; healthier menu options; economic factors like wages and labor costs; rapid business expansion; and others. Strategy formulation and execution is concentrated among upper management members and managers (Hitt et al., 2003). The unique features of the Company must be proliferated. While it is true that Panera Bread takes pride on handcrafted, fresh-baked, and artisan bread, the Company should also focus on unmatched and innovative product-service offerings. The identified emerging trends that can significantly affect the Company should be considered primarily because they serve as potent source of solutions or business opportunities.
In relation to the identified conditions, customers’ trends and demands must be recognized by Panera Bread. This can also be a promising opportunity in the development of product-service offerings. According to Wight (1999), the central attribute of service companies is the interaction between the customers and the Company itself. The marketer (Company) and the customer are the most important participants in a marketing process. The customers, aside from the product or service, are among the most significant stakeholders in profit and nonprofit organization. Customers’ needs and demands are the source of entrepreneurial function. Panera Bread should then identify the needs and demands of the targeted customers. Considerations include several factors like demographics, socio-cultural, and economic among others. For example, the sudden shift of majority of American population to healthy products and services is an important customer trend that Panera Bread and its management should take into further attention. Although the Company’s products are considerably healthy, the management must work on product innovation based on the current and varied customers’ needs and demands.
Furthermore, Panera Bread belongs to the service industry. Knod and Schonberger (2001) aver service industry must successfully address the challenges of industry and global competition through understanding that survival and success is dependent upon the ability to reconstruct business operations to obtain quality standards, time- and cost-effective delivery, and secured services. The development of overall service quality is relative to the nature of Company’s management, its core product-service offerings, its standards, marketer and customer relationships, change management, and many more. More often than not, the way in which a Company provides or delivers its products or services, aside from the product or services itself is evaluated by the customers. Since Panera Bread is a member of the quick-casual restaurant sector, service quality is expected to be highly commendable and at its maximum delivery.
All in all, Panera Bread is undoubtedly holds a significant position in the quick-casual restaurant sector. There are numerous core competencies that the Company and its management can be proud of especially its product-service offerings. What the management needs to do is to enhance the existing beneficial attributes and focus on the emerging trends in the restaurant industry, customer trends and satisfaction, and overall service quality.
References
Hitt, MA, Ireland, RD, and Hoskisson, RE (2003) Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization (5th edn), South-Western, Singapore
Knod, E and Schonberger, R (2001) Operations Management: Meeting Customers’ Demands (7th Edition), McGraw-Hill Irwin, Boston, MA
Wight, JN (1999) The Management of Service Operations, Cassell Publication, London
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