Operations

Panera launches first 'next-generation' cafe

Panera's restaurant design features a modern and revitalized dine-in experience around its signature fireplace coupled with enhanced digital, personalized options, and dual drive-thru access. Provided

November 23, 2021

Panera has chosen Ballwin, Missouri, as the home of its first "next-generation" restaurant design. Featuring a modern dine-in experience around its fireplace coupled with enhanced digital, personalized options and dual drive-thru access, the restaurant opened this week and is on a mission to serve guests in an increasingly off-premise world, said Eduardo Luz, chief brand & concept officer.

"Our new bakery-cafe is designed with the best of what makes Panera unique — a warm, inviting environment that delights our guests, and the smell of freshly baked bread coupled with tech-enabled convenience," he said in a company press release. "We're proud to launch this new design just outside of our hometown of St. Louis; in fact, we couldn't think of a better place to showcase our vision for the future than the place where we started."

The Panera next-generation bakery-café features the following main updates:

Craft bakery experience: Panera is moving the bakery-cafe ovens to be in full view of guests, so they can watch the baking happening throughout the day.
Dual-drive thru with dedicated Rapid Pick-Up lane. The double-lane drive-thru has one lane specifically for the brand's Rapid Pick-Up service.
Enhanced digital experience: The cafe features contactless dine-in and delivery, updated ordering kiosks, automatic loyalty identification and a fully digitized menu both in-cafe and in the drive-thru.
Contactless ordering: The service allows guests who choose a fully contactless experience to order their meal from their own phones for dine-in, Rapid Pick-up, drive-thru or delivery. Once the order is made, guests are notified via mobile notifications when their food is ready, minimalizing interaction with cashiers, kiosks, paper receipts or pagers.
Refreshed brand identity. It has an updated Panera Bread logo and brand identity. The refreshed Panera "Mother Bread" logo is a nod to Panera Bread's more than 30-year-old sourdough starter from which all of its sourdough bread is still made today.
Intuitive guest journey: Guest convenience is one of the highest priorities of the new design, from deploying clear and concise wayfinding on the exterior of the cafe to refining how the guest routes through the cafe after entering the front door, to optimizing the ordering and pick-up experience.

"We undertook the development of the next generation Panera bakery-cafe with a relentless focus on guest experience," Rob Sopkin, SVP and CDO, said in the release. "Every step of the guest journey was scrutinized to find ways to make it more intuitive and convenient, and the result represents the very best of our design and development teams that we are proud to open today."

Panera worked with brand design agency ChangeUp to design the next-generation Panera restaurant concept.