Panera Bread

By: Jenna Greene, Taylor Day, Dianna Craine, Joseph Toby, & Ryan Barnes

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY RATIONALE METHOD RESULTS CONTENT ANALYSIS DISCUSSION RECOMMENDATIONS Appendix A & B PAGE 3 PAGE 4-6 PAGE 7-8 PAGE 9 PAGE 10-11 PAGE 12-13 PAGE 14-15 PAGE 16-22

Executive Summary
Panera Bread is a thriving company with over 1,500 bakery-cafes that stretch across 41 states nationwide. This report focused on the 18-22 year old market. Panera Bread as a company takes pride in the quality and nutritional value of its products. That is why we were one of the first companies to provide nutritional information on our menus. As a company, Panera Bread is striving to become a top eatery choice for college age students by focusing our research on affordability and healthy food options; we are able to decide how to make Panera Bread a first choice. This report utilizes multiple methods in order to obtain the most accurate analysis possible. Focus groups, survey research, and content analysis were all used in order to obtain the most diverse and accurate results. Three different focus groups were conducted. The first group was large, consisting of four females and four males. Then two smaller groups were conducted, consisting of three males and three females each. Participants were asked a series of questions based on their knowledge and experiences of Panera Bread and their specific wants or needs. The information gathered gave us a better understanding on how to cater to our specific publics. Surveys were distributed at random and through an online survey site. Information that was gathered included demographic figures, such as age and major, as well as eating habits and affordability of our specific public. All of the data compiled above was analyzed in order to evaluate the relationship that Panera Bread has with the 18-22 ages demographic. Please refer to Appendices A for further content and findings.

Rationale
Panera Bread has decided to conduct a focus group using Flagler College students to obtain particular information from our target audience. We only used participants that fit within our demographic in order to be as accurate as possible. The focus group will allow Panera to gain information from the participants and use the information to better understand how our target audience perceives Panera Bread. We decided on conducting three different focus groups in order to receive the most diverse and equal representation possible of our publics. The first focus group consisted of eight people, four males and four females that met our demographic needs. This allowed for more diversity and equal gender representation in our results. A focus group of eight people was chosen because we wanted a group small enough for everyone to have an opportunity to share insights and yet be large enough to provide diversity of perceptions. Our other two focus groups were much smaller. One consisted of three females and the other consisted of three males. These smaller groups offer more opportunities for participants to share their ideas and input. Splitting the groups by gender gave us a better understanding of what each genders perceptions and insights were. Participants in our focus groups were composed of people who were reasonably similar to each other also in the fact that they are all college students at Flagler College. This allowed us to focus on the purpose of the study. We also made sure our participants were not familiar with one another because familiarity tends to inhibit disclosure. We wanted our participants to be able to express their opinions and ideas without feeling that their decision was being judged.

By conducting multiple focus groups we will be able to pay attention to the perceptions of the users and consumers of Panera Bread and will be able to determine their feelings and manner of thinking regarding Panera Bread. Overall, using focus groups helped us produce qualitative data that provides insights into the attitudes, perceptions and opinions of college students towards Panera Bread. Since our demographic is college students ages 18-22, we focused our analysis on social media feedback. Panera has decided to use social media because the majority of our demographics are constantly on multiple social media sites. It is an easy way to gather the demographics thoughts and opinions on Panera Bread using social media sites. This way they are not in a structured setting, but expressing how they feel wiithout any restrictions. Social media has proven to have a huge effect on this demographics and we were able to gather important information from social media that will help Panera Bread become the top eatery choice for college students. By reviewing numerous social media sites regarding Panera Bread we were able to gather information on what people like and dislike, this information helps us conduct research and how we can better our company to satisfy our customers. Our survey research consisted of honest questions that we wanted to know about what our demongraphic thinks about Panera Bread. Our surveys consisted of a diverse group of Flagler College students that are within our demongraphic. By using a diverse group we are able to gather information and the different perceptions people have about Panera Bread. Using surveys will allow our demongraphic to answer honestly and anonoymously to the the questions that we provided. This will give us insight as to what

we can keep and change in order to keep our customers loyal and while also developing new ones. Panera Bread has decided to focus on this demographic because at there age they are starting to become more health concious and are looking for a place to get good food that is healthy. If Panera Bread can become college students top eatery choice, we can build relationships with our young adults and possibly gain longtime loyal customers.

Method
Our group chose to focus in on Panera Bread and their impact on college students. We chose to do a study on where Panera Bread ranks on affordability and nutrition. The group of people used for this study was Flagler College students ages 18-22. In order for us to conduct this study we had to come up with different types of research. We started off by utilizing focus groups. We conducted three different focus groups, in case the first one caused error, where we asked a series of open-ended questions to our specific demographic. In our goal to find out how students think about the cost of eating at Panera Bread along with how nutritious it is our focus group questions were to find out how much the students knew about Panera Bread. By finding that out we were able to see where Panera Bread was thriving and failing to provide their information to the public. After conducting our focus groups we decided to do survey research. Using the website surveymonkey.com we were able to get students to fill out a quick online survey consisting of 10 questions in order to get to the facts. The questions asked in the survey were close ended straight to the facts type of questions. We wanted to ask straightforward questions and since the survey is anonymous it was easier for us to get the answers we needed to get Panera their recognition. We were also able to print out surveys to hand out to people to get our results right away. While gathering that information we did a study of the content analysis of Panera Bread to see where their strong points were. Since we were dealing with college students the best way to reach out to them is through social media networking sites. Facebook and Twitter were the best way to examine how well Panera does reaching out. These sites

provide the quickest ROI (return on investment) because of how direct the feedback is. During the content analysis we also studied how well the current commercials at Panera Bread were doing with this audience and its publics in general. By gathering all of this information we were able to see where Panera Bread stands with college students from Flagler College.

Surveys:
Our group distributed surveys as well as provided an online survey over surveymonkey.com. They were given to Flagler College students between the ages 18-22. Our results were able to give us a better understanding of how Panera Bread can relate more to their college demographic.

Focus Groups:
We did three different focus groups consisting of three males and three females as the first two groups and four females and four males in the third focus group. We chose to do three focus groups to get a better understanding of the differences males and females feel about Panera Bread. The focus group took place on Flagler College campus in the Proctor library. Our conclusion of the focus group was that Panera Bread should stay open later and come up with a value menu to become more affordable on a college budget. We also came to the conclusion that most females who go to Panera Bread are more conscious and aware of the nutrition facts while the males go there more for just eating.

Results
According to our results from the research we did we found that many Flagler College students between the ages of 18-22 were aware of what Panera Bread is known for and eats there often. We also learned through our surveys that everyone who took our survey were active on social media networks which helps with feedback and getting the word out there about the restaurant. Since most college students are on a budget we found that many people thought that Panera Bread had nutritious food but should offer a value menu for reasons such as that. Most females had been to Panera Bread more often than the males for the main reason that many males do not get full from the food and that it is too far from campus to want to drive to, which in return leads them to pick a closer fast food restaurant. This study helped us realize that Panera Bread has done a good job promoting its healthy menu choices while having too high of costs for the college budget. Overall, the results we found from our focus groups and surveys helped us develop a better understanding of how college students perceive Panera Bread as a whole. Results from the survey can be viewed in Appendix A.

Content Analysis
According to our research Panera Bread is a well-known franchise. Panera Bread has a wide range of content out there for their publics including a website that offers a way to build a meal from their full menu while providing the nutrition facts. Panera Bread is also very big in utilizing social media. They have a high following on Twitter and Facebook compared to competitors such as Crispers. They also have a commercial on television that first aired in June of 2011 and is still on air now. We first measured how Panera Bread is doing through social media by using Klout.com, which is a social media-monitoring tool that measures how influential a person or company is. Panera Bread has a score of 81 out of a possible 100. Panera Bread is also in the top 1,000 influencers on Bing.

Panera has a high following on Twitter, which is good for their company because it allows the publics to express their likes and dislikes of their service and it is very good at responding back to negative tweets.

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Another way we were able to track Panera was from the commercial that aired. Since the commercial aired in June of 2011, we searched on Google Trends to see how many people searched Panera Bread commercial only to find that no one has searched for that particular thing during the next few months. Below is a screen shot of how little the search for the Panera commercial was until about January of 2012.

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Discussion
In our research to find out how to make Panera Bread more college student friendly we conducted focus groups and online surveys to our designated demographic. In specific we wanted to find out where the cost and nutrition of Panera Bread ranked among Flagler College students ages 18-22. We also studied their social media in order to figure out how well they reach out to their publics via social media. A quick review of our results would show that the majority age group for this study was between 20-21 year olds with most of them being female. The majority of our results show that the prices outweigh the nutrition aspect of Panera. Also we had almost every person in our study had been to Panera Bread and knew a good amount about them, which was helpful for our research. In order to find out how our demographic felt about the cost and nutrition we asked a series of questions relating to this through focus groups and surveys. We tried to make the main emphasis of the focus groups open-ended questions about what our publics knew about Panera Bread and how we could make it better and more college student friendly. On our surveys we tried to concentration on getting the straight forward questions and answers by asking things such as rating their last experience at Panera Bread and whether they visit Panera Bread because of the price of the food or the nutrition. According to our findings, almost everyone in the focus groups found that Panera Bread should make a value menu to meet the budget needs of our demographic. We also found that a majority of our female audience eats at Panera Bread for the nutrition of the food. The surveys showed that a majority of our publics used Facebook more often when

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they use social networking sites. Finding this helped us realize that we will be more likely to reach out to this demographic over Facebook more than other social networking sites.

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Recommendations
Panera Bread competes on many levels when it comes to the highly competitive restaurant business. Panera Bread is regularly reviewing and revising their menu to sustain the interest of regular customers, satisfy changing customer preferences and be responsive to various seasons of the year. However, our research showed there were changes Panera Bread could make to accommodate college students. One change shown in our studies is that Panera Bread should open a location closer in proximity to the school. Not all college students have cars so this would mainly focus on them. Many said in the focus groups that they would be willing to visit Panera Bread more often if they were within walking distance of the school. Another potential change shown in our studies was that Panera Bread should come up with a value menu. Most college students are always looking for cheaper meals, which is why Panera Bread has to compete with other fast food restaurants. Panera Bread could choose to come up with some deals like other restaurants in our area. Students could get deals on certain days such as ten percent off or buy one get one half off on different items. Since we found in our surveys and content analysis that many people use Facebook the most Panera Bread could start utilizing their social media outlets more often and let students know when they will have a deal and also when they are bringing new menu items out. Something we found as a concern in our focus groups is that most males find Panera Bread not as filling as most places. Most males prefer bigger portions so we believe that Panera Bread should offer different sizing options. They should offer a

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smaller portion for people who werent looking for a ton of food and offer a large portion for people who are looking for more food for their money.

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Appendix A: Survey (via Surveymonkey.com)

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Paper Survey

Panera Bread Survey

1. Male or Female? a. Male b. Female 2. How old are you? a. 18 b. 19 c. 20 d. 21 e. 22 3. How often do you eat out monthly? a. Never b. Once a week c. A couple times a week d. Everyday 4. Have you ever eaten at Panera Bread? a. Yes b. No 5. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being expensive) how do you rate the cost of eating at Panera Bread? a. 1 b. 2 c. 3 d. 4 e. 5 6. Do you go to Panera to study or use their WiFi? a. Yes b. No 7. What social networks do you use? a. Facebook b. Twitter 20

c. MySpace d. Google + 8. Do you eat at Panera for cost or nutrition? a. Cost b. Nutrition c. Both d. Neither 9. Do you prefer Crispers or Panera Bread? a. Crispers b. Panera

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Appendix B: Focus Group

1. How old are you? 2. What is your major? 3. What is your favorite fast food place to eat at? 4. What do you know about Panera? 5. What is your favorite menu item? 6. Would you be willing to study at Panera? 7. What do you know about Paneras nutrition? 8. Did you know that Panera offers free WiFi? 9. What was your last experience at Panera like? 10. What did you think about the service at Panera? 11. Do you know where your local Panera is located? 12. How can Panera accommodate the needs of college students? 13. How do you feel about the pricing at Panera? 14. What would make you inclined to visit Panera more often?

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