Panera Bread - Food As It Should Be

Panera Bread's "Clean Food" Campaign

A lot of junk food has disappeared since more and more people started to care healthiness. If you look around, you can find that even fast food franchises are serving low-calories and less-fat menu. Needless to say, various kinds of fast-healthy-food cafe/restaurants appeared, such as Panera Bread, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, Subway, and the list goes on. However, there have been some fatal food scandals, which had people to lost trust in those brands.

Among those cafes/restaurants serving healthy food, Panera Bread has been doing a very good job by providing good quality food using the clean ingredient. Panera wants to differentiate itself from other healthy fast-food franchises. Ron Shaich, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Panera Bread, who also founded Au Bon Pain, started thirty years ago to follow his passion for changing the world by changing the way America eats. He made an innovation in the restaurant industry by offering  handmade and artisanal fast-food.

The start of the clean food movement, ‘Food As It Should Be’ campaign, was introduced in May 2015 with a "No No list" of artificial ingredients Panera will stop using by the end of 2016. It also includes moves such as early adoption of voluntary calorie posting and chicken raised without antibiotics, implementing animal welfare standards and removing artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives from its food. The company is working to have the entire menu to be "clean" while keeping the price consistent.

Panera Bread's Videos Focusing on Freshness

Panera was smart - it took advantage of digital marketing, especially videos, to deliver its "Clean Food" message very well. Since Panera started 'Food As It Should Be' campaign, it has launched a series of videos featuring cleanness, freshness, and healthiness. Watching the videos made me feel so refreshed that I want to run into Panera.

In January 2016, Panera proved again how smart it is by adding customer's reviews on its new video. Panera released a video trailer that Panera's head chef Dan Kish went to in order to remove artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives from the soup without affecting the flavor that has made it the chain's best seller. To remove eight ingredients, Kish went through 60 variations of the soup, according to Panera. To drive awareness and sampling of its newly "clean" soups — particularly its broccoli cheddar flavor — Panera Bread is offering fans the opportunity to have their tweets about the soup incorporated in an "endless trailer" video. It was a perfect combination for food marketing; beautiful visual, good reviews, and consumers engagement.

>>Watch "Endless Trailer"<<

Heena's Review and Feedback

I appreciate Panera's consistent commitment to clean and healthy food. Panera has been trying very hard to keep its promise while some other similar brands have got in trouble with food scandals. Panera has specific plans, strict policies, and its own deadline to achieve goals. Panera also created digital contents that successfully delivered its message and encourage customers to engage in its campaign.

However, Panera has focused too much on its plans and announcements rather than its achievement. It's already the last quarter of 2016 and Panera's accomplishment is supposed to come out little by little. For example, how many artificial ingredients Panera has removed from its "No No List", how Panera has replaced bad ingredients with good ones, etc. On top of that, I'd like to suggest more sampling events in and out of the stores to convince customers that the taste is still good regardless of removal of artificial ingredients.