Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) is a chain of bakery-café restaurants in America and Canada. Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) is rolling out its new 2.0 strategy, which enables the customer to order directly from his/her smartphones as well as digital payment, among other things. Stephen Anderson, Restaurant Analyst at Miller Tabak & Co shared on CNBC his view on how this might impact the sales.
Anderson feels that Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) is a “victim of its own success.” The company has had a slow sales growth due to the fact that more and more people prefer it to casual sit-down restaurants for lunch and dinner period, which causes a crush during these periods.
“What Panera 2.0 tries to address is getting more customers in through the door and in online rather than having the customers to go away,” he added.
Anderson also discussed similar issues faced by Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) and the measures that they have taken over the past 18 months have improved their sales by about 150 basis points. He also pointed out that the company will be able to save more money from using technology for serving its customers.
“Well, as management said, they will use some of the savings from tech to have more servers bring the food to you, which is not the case in lot of other restaurants”
Anderson also said that he would not be surprised if Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) have net savings over time on both labor line and food cost line, such as tech enabling reduction in food waste.
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