Panera Bread

Panera Bread is a fast casual bakery-café chain that pairs a neighborhood bakery experience with a familiar menu of soups, salads, sandwiches, coffee, and baked goods. The company operates a mix of company-owned and franchised cafés across the United States and Canada under the Panera Bread and Saint Louis Bread Co names. As of November 2024, Panera and its franchisees operate about 2,000 cafés across 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Canada, giving the brand a wide presence in both suburban and select urban trade areas.

The business traces its origins to 1987, when Ken Rosenthal opened the first St. Louis Bread Company bakery in Kirkwood, Missouri. In 1993, Au Bon Pain Co. acquired St. Louis Bread Company and began expanding the concept beyond its original market, adopting the Panera Bread brand name as it grew. Through the 2000s and early 2010s, Panera became one of the early leaders in the emerging fast casual category and grew to more than 2,000 locations by the mid-2010s, making it the largest bakery-café chain in the United States by sales. A major milestone came in 2017, when JAB Holding Company acquired Panera in a transaction valued at roughly $7.5 billion and later grouped it with Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels under the Panera Brands umbrella.

Today Panera focuses on serving guests across multiple channels, including in-café dining, order-ahead, Rapid Pick-Up, curbside, drive-thru, delivery, and catering. The company has invested heavily in digital ordering and loyalty platforms so that guests can order through mobile apps, kiosks, and online channels, which in turn shapes how its cafés are laid out and how front-of-house space is used. Across the system, Panera and its franchise operators employ close to 100,000 people in café operations, baking, and support roles, supported by a privately held ownership structure under JAB and Panera Brands.

Over roughly the last five years, Panera has shifted from a pure new-unit growth story to a more selective, performance-focused growth posture. The company is restructuring its asset base around two primary café formats: updated Core cafés and a newer Small Box format. Both are intended to improve unit-level economics by lowering build-out costs, refining kitchen layouts, and supporting higher digital and drive-thru volumes. This evolution has allowed Panera to fit into a wider range of real estate footprints than its earlier, larger cafés, including more compact sites in infill suburban locations, select urban and near-urban corridors, and convenience-oriented parcels that can support a drive-thru.

For landlords, brokers, and developers, Panera typically looks for visible, easy-access positions that can capture strong daytime traffic. The brand is a familiar presence in grocery-anchored centers, power centers, neighborhood centers, and on freestanding or endcap pads. Newer cafés frequently incorporate drive-thru lanes and designated areas for digital order pick-up, which can help concentrate traffic at key access points and support all-day use of the site. The concept draws business across breakfast, lunch, and dinner, boosted by bakery, coffee, and a meaningful catering and digital order mix.

As of November 2024, Panera is in a refinement and selective expansion phase. The company continues to open new cafés in existing and adjacent markets through both company and franchise operators, with particular focus on drive-thru capable sites and locations with robust daytime population and strong access. At the same time, it is investing in remodeling and prototype conversions to bring existing cafés into the updated Core or Small Box designs. Leadership has highlighted improving order accuracy, hospitality, and labor efficiency as key priorities, alongside reducing build-out costs and adapting cafés to fit more varied real estate settings.

Panera’s current scale, long operating history, recognized brand, and flexible café formats position it as a stable and adaptable tenant for a range of retail and mixed-use environments. Its all-day traffic and emphasis on convenience-oriented store designs align well with the types of centers and parcels that are seeing sustained demand across mature and emerging suburban markets.