Because I’m sitting in Panera Bread writing this, I think it is really cool to see how Panera sells their products, and how they do things differently. It was very interesting to listen to Blaine Hurst last semester as he talked about their emphasis on raising and serving food that is good for you, and good. It was really cool for him to ask the class about different negative views that we have at Panera, and I think that they are really striving to constantly improve how they sell to people. I think that they have found their customer’s pains, and strive to fix them in the best way that they can. It is cool when a company as big as this, puts such an emphasis on individual customers’ pains, as well as the collective group of customers as a whole.
Panera Bread is a different type of restaurant, but each one that you go into has a set of workers that buy into what the restaurant is all about, and capture that into how they sell to people that walk through their doors. The whole sales process, from marketing, to the stores individually, is on the same page, and I truly believe that Panera can succeed by being different because of their cohesion with the rest of the company.
BoweryJE22
I definitely agree with this. I think that Panera embodies what an upper-level fast food restaurant should look like and strive for.
As you said, their success is rooted in the cohesiveness of their strategy across the company. This made me think about how consistency in branding and performance and customer communication can build trust, which is of course at the core of success in sales. Even if a company’s sales strategy is different, it can build rapport and trust with customers if it is consistent and reliable in its unique methodology.