My Panera Office

Archive for the ‘Resturant Office’ Category

5 Reasons to Office at Panera Bread

Panera is one of my favorite spots to sit down, open up my lap top and talk to the world and the person in booth next to me.  Here are my 5 favorite reasons for doing so:

• Panera has some of the best coffee around, they serve it in a great mug and I can help myself to fresh refills whenever I please.
• The smell of bread and pastries being baked is much better than grease or incense that I smell in other hangouts.
• There are free samples of fine breads or their newest cookies near the door.
• There is not waitperson coming around to put a check on my table and say “whenever you are ready.”
• Clients love to meet me there.

Here are just some random tweets today (Nov.  12, 2010) how more and more people are using Panera Bread as their office.  I am not sure if it is the economy, the smell of fresh baked bread, or the free wifi, but Panera is the office on the run for many:

• just sitting here at my new office…. Panera’s parking lot
• Ever noticed how at daytime, panera becomes a quasi portable office space for deadbeat businessmen? Weird.
• I am headed to the office, panera bread
• Panera is always my office on the road…
• Panera is one of my favorite office locations… Good coffee to.
• Remote office today! (@ Panera Bread)

We are a going band.

To set up an office for a few hours on the road or just going down the block to work, Panera Bread and Starbucks seem to be favorite options for many of us who like to work around food and a nice ambiance, yet away from the pad where we sleep.

There have been a lot of comparisons of these two ‘restaurants.’   See look at their stocks from all angles so decide on buy, sell, or hold.  Seeking Alpha did that a couple of years back, check it out.  Barron’s discussed both of their excellent earnings results in January.  Read the article, then call your broker.

An owner of several franchises of each lined them up from an owners perspective.  If you have a lot of cash and are interested in becoming an owner, look this over.

But readers of this blog are interested in the customer service and their wifi.  Hands down, Panera wins out.  The bakery chain has a much more suitable seating area, with actual tables and booths.  Much better than Starbuck’s lounge chairs for setting up a temporary office.  More importantly, we want to save money.  Panera’s wifi is free and most of the time it is more reliable and faster.

What about this as a Panera bonus.  According to an article in the Chicago Tribune last year, Panera Bread’s coffee is as good as Starbucks, but cheaper.

I am a loyal Panera Bread cutomer, and proud to count it as my office away from home.

How do you compare Starbucks and Panera Bread?

Many of us have a business we run or work on out of our office at home, whether that be a full blown room complete with a desk, computer, printer (cum fax, copier, scanner), white boards, mic. and speakers, file cabinets, and even a globe, or just a laptop and a place to sit in the living-room.  Sometimes we need to meet with clients, co-workers, coaches, or consultants.  Do we set appointments to meet them at home?  Not if we heed the advice of Virtual-Professionals.com, “Should a potential client who is also self-employed and working from a home office wants to meet with you, I suggest that you mention meeting at a coffee shop, which is mutually convenient to both parties.”  Sounds like to me like they are saying, ‘Meet at Panera Bread.’

Seriously, (well I was serious) meeting in your home can be dangerous and less than professional.  Our homes are about the most private meeting places we could arrange.  Many would view an invitation of meeting us there as an invitation to something completely different.  If someone wants to do us harm or rob us, suggesting that we meet at our home office provides them the opportunity for all types of maliciousness.

Besides, we have the fine, comfortable, and quiet acceptable Panera Bread Restaurant available so we can talk and call up whatever we need to on the internet.

Happy, safe meetings with you clients.

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Panera Bread Restaurants is reporting that same-store sales rose 2.8% in the first 27 days of the third quarter.  That is truly an anomaly in business, especially in the food services realm.  Some are saying that it has a lot to do with the growing number of work from home (work from anywhere but the office) folks, like us, who appreciate the free Wifi in the Panera Bread eateries.

In fact, Panera Bread Restaurants Wifi and comfortable surroundings is making it the place for more and more people to meet with clients and even have office meetings there.  Many bloggers, like Computer Daddy, are saying “Panera’s open Wi-Fi availability not only makes it my first choice for working coffee, lunch and dinner breaks while I am on the road, but it is also my first choice for off-site meetings with both vendors and staff.”