Fan Art of What we Do in the Shadows by SecretAgentSodaPop
I am interested in the article: “Panera Reintroduces Brand with Focus on Dine-In Cafe Experience” from MarketingDive.com because the featured phase “It just meals good” caught my eye. I didn’t understand what it meant, and I wanted to learn more.
I’m part of a knitting group that meets on a weekly basis at Panera Bread in Albany and haven’t been impressed by the sandwiches, drink offerings, and high-priced menu items. This investigation into the Marketing Dive article and Panera Bread ad has me wonder if Peter Adam’s information can change my mind about my experiences at Panera. If Guillermo De La Cruz who worked at Panera Bread in What We Do in the Shadows can’t influence me to appreciate Panera Bread, I don’t know what will.
Summary: The article, published on the 10th of April 2025 authored by Peter Adams, first showcases Panera’s new brand platform in a descriptive photo, then explains Panera’s Dive Brief and Dive Insights. Adam’s reports in the Dive Brief that Panera Bread is rebranding as a sit-down restaurant. This is explained further in Adam’s Dive Insight, where he explains the “It Just Meals Good,” campaign which I inferred is a pun or mash up of “it just feels good to eat a sit-down meal at Panera.” It seems there is a new movement of on-the-go chains to reestablish hang-out spots evocative of pre-pandemic lifestyles. Adam’s reveals that these campaign changes and brand renewal happened after wrongful death lawsuits, executive upheavals, and marketing agency changes. Peter Adam’s article is followed by Recommended Reading Links: Panera Brands Hire Permanent CEO, Panera Hires Marketing, Culinary Executives, Panera Bread Nabs Papa Johns CMO Following Menu Overhaul. The links back up Peter Adam’s claims and legitimizes Marketing Dive as a reliable marketing news source. The recommended reading links of the initial article had their own recommended reading links of the Panera Brand changes, reinstating Peter Adam’s analysis in an article rabbit hole that goes on forever like infinity mirrors.
Image from MarketingDive.com article
Critique: Adams claims: “New ads try to capture the vibrancy of a packed Panera cafe with fluid camera movements while showcasing staple menu items.” Outside of the first 15 seconds, I couldn’t disagree more. It makes me wonder if Adams watched the ad at 0.5 playback speed. To test this idea, I tried watching it at 0.5 playback speed and couldn’t recreate Adam’s experience of “fluid camera movements.” The camera angle swished and swirled with accelerated motion like a high-speed tennis match in some frames. In other frames zooming in to showcase the food in streaming photos flicking too fast to focus on anything except as an ingredient hodge podge. One thing the ad had going for it was the sound of bread tearing. Three gratuitous bread tears delighted the ears, while the eyes and brain were on a nauseating whirligig. If I was the ad director, I wouldn’t push the ad to be so splashy with the camera movements. It seemed antithesis to the new campaign’s marketing message of ‘hey, come here, sit down and take a load off, enjoy yourself and your meal with your loved ones, besties, and non-alcohol drinking friends.” Speculation has me think that maybe the message is for a much younger audience who is still open to the ideas Panera’s new campaign is slanging.
Panera Bread’s Value Proposition: On Panera Bread’s website “Good food served in warm, welcoming spaces by people who care can bring out the best in all of us.” This translates in an AI overview as “providing fresh, high-quality, and affordable healthy food in a welcoming and community-minded atmosphere” is not a novel or unique marketing ploy. Their competition Chipotle, Laughing Planet, Café Yumm, and Starbucks have also taken up parallel themes of individuating themselves through quality of ingredients, atmosphere, and customer service with different levels of price premiums.
Panera touts that it is opening its doors and inviting the world back from the alienating experiences of Covid’s Shelter-in-place and social distancing protocols. Wanting to establish itself as a “third place” hangout, (If it isn’t obvious work and home being the first two of these hangouts), which seems to be a pitch of their competitors as well.
Image 1: $30 worth of "research"
Image 3: Chicken and Avo BLT ~$14.39
Image 2: Tomato Soup ~$8.89
If I was the campaign manager and marketing director, I would be more honest and realistic about what Panera’s strengths and weaknesses are, which I don’t think the new campaign does. It’s pitching a ‘fake it till you make it’ vibe and I’m not sure it is destined to last. I can see what the campaign is reaching for, but I think the promises are more empty and deflated then achievable. Changing their image through a marketing campaign that steps up their achievable goals while also performing those deliverables is a better way to do business.
An aside: Solely for “research” purposes, I went to Panera for dinner tonight and spent $30 on whole sandwich, a bowl of tomato soup, and a large drink. Though tasty, the $30 price tag can’t be justified. It doesn’t seem like the general public of this area has drunk (drinked? dranken?) Panera’s new campaign Kool-Aid yet, because it usually is ghost town inside there, except for knitting group nights. Those nights, knitters and crocheters fill the place up with their clacking needles and scratchy noodles of yarn, laughing and cackling like secret wooly witches of ewe-burg. Panera should market to that demographic. That would be a successful marketing campaign.
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