Panera enters the chicken sandwich wars

Yahoo Finance's Brooke DiPalma discusses Panera's newest menu offering coming to stores: the chef's chicken sandwich.

影片文字轉錄稿

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRAD SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance, everyone. Panera is officially in the chicken sandwich competition. Today the restaurant chain announced its entree with two new options and its entry into this chicken sandwich wars. Brooke DiPalma is here with the details. Brooke, what do we need to know?

BROOKE DIPALMA: Brad, that's right. Panera finally has some skin in the game when it comes to the chicken sandwich competition. Today, they're out with what they're calling the chef's chicken sandwiches. They unveiled this new category with two options, the signature take, and the spicy take. Now both include a quarter pound of all white meat chicken. That's marinated and then seasoned with their spice blend, seared to a golden brown, and then cooked sous vide. Sounds pretty fancy, huh Brad?

But the signature take is topped with either parmesan chips and the spicy take topped with crispy pickled chips and spicy Buffalo sauce. Now I did have a chance to speak to Panera's chief brand and concept officer Eduardo Luz, who said that in true Panera fashion, this has no filler, no breading, just high-quality meat. Of course, [INAUDIBLE] a bit of a jab at its competitors there. Now, keep in mind, this will be available nationwide on March 30. And this comes at a trying time for the restaurant industry at large of course, many supply chain strains still facing the restaurant industry, and lots of inflationary pressure.

But Eduardo said the Panera team is in fact prepared, associates are trained, and that they're ready to deal with the volumes that they're expecting, which they anticipate to be high based upon market tests at the end of the year. And what you're seeing right now is a proprietary design on packaging that Panera created. Alongside this launch, they want the sandwich to stay warm when on the go. And so it has a release-- a strip away at the middle of that packaging for customers on the go. So high expectations from the Panera team here with their latest addition to the menu.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: It looks good. And I'm always down for a spicy take. So I'm looking forward to trying that. But when you think about the timing, this comes more than a year after most of the food industry already debuted their version of a chicken sandwich. So break down what took so long and where it stands among the competition.

BROOKE DIPALMA: Yeah, Rachelle. Eduardo weighed in on that. And he said that this has been two years in the making. And when I asked why it took that long and why they waited this long, he simply said that his team did a fantastic job, he said, of securing the ingredients. And in our case, he said that it was extra challenging because their expectations and the standards that Panera set were quote unquote, "so high".

Now as you can see, here are lots of others in the competition. Now this will be a starting a retail price of $10.99. That's the suggested retail price I meant to say. But as you look at the others here, it's a bit a price higher compared to the competition of course. Burger King out there, Ch'King, Chick-fil-A, an original in this chicken sandwich competition. Wendy's debuted the jalapeno popper sandwich. And if we take a look at others, KFC out with their chicken sandwich, McDonald's has their crispy chicken, and Popeyes, that one that originally debuted back in 2019 as a competition, original competition to the original Chick-fil-A sandwich.

And of course that sparked this entire chicken sandwich competition. But Panera confident here that they're engaging a different type of audience, one that really cares about what they're putting into their system. And just like the other fast food companies that have really made it big on these chicken sandwich wars you could say, is that Panera is really hoping that they have a winner here. So on March 30, we'll have to see what sort of feedback customers have. Of course, there's so many options. It's a bit crowded here. But Panera looking to make its way through.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: We're already getting some feedback in our Slack channel on an $11 chicken sandwich. That is a lot to swallow. But thank you so much, Brooke DiPalma, for that update there. All right. Well, as we just head into the end of the show, a quick look at how markets closed today. As we saw, all three major indices ending the day in positive territory. The Dow up 0.75% almost, the S&P 500 up just over 1%. And the tech heavy NASDAQ, the big winner of the day up almost 2%.