Panera Bread to cut 300 corporate jobs ahead of planned IPO

A Panera Bread store in Chicago, US | Photo credit: Panera Bread

Panera Bread is to cut approximately 300 of its 1,800 corporate staff in a bid to streamline the business ahead of its long-awaited public offering. 
 

The coffee and food-to-go chain is part of the Panera Brands group, which operates 3,800 outlets across the Panera Bread, Einstein Bros. Bagels and Caribou Coffee brands. The cuts will mainly fall on support staff roles, a spokesperson confirmed to World Coffee Portal.

“To best position the company for the future and continually improve our guest experience, Panera is taking steps to simplify our operations. To fully enable this simplified model, we have made some difficult decisions to better align our support structure with our strategy,” a Panera Bread spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

Founded in 1987, Panera Bread was a public company until 2017, when it was acquired and taken private by JAB Holding Company in a $7.16bn deal. 

The Luxembourg-headquartered investment giant created Panera Brands in August 2021 before filing for an IPO in the following November. 

In July 2022, Panera Brands put its planned IPO on hold after ending its partnership with hospitality investor USHG Acquisition Corp (HUGS) due to ‘unfavourable capital market conditions’. 

However, in May 2023 the group said it was establishing ‘its next generation of CEO leadership’ in preparation for a listing and appointed José Alberto Dueñas as its new CEO. 

Dueñas had previously served as President and CEO of Einstein Bros. Bagels since 2019 and was credited with executing ‘a major operating model simplification’ which resulted in ‘significant improvements in unit-level economics and overall margin expansion’.   

In September 2023, Panera Brands further bolstered its leadership team in preparation to go public by appointing former Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Patrick Grismer as Lead Independent Director and former Krispy Kreme CEO Michael Tattersfield to its Board of Directors. 

Panera Brands’ revenues in 2022 exceeded $4.8bn.