Panera Bread Puts Branded K-cups on Retail Shelves in US

Panera Bread Co. is getting in on the K-Cup action.

The fast casual chain said it would debut single-serve coffee pods nationwide, featuring the same coffee served at its 1,736 bakery-cafes.

Panera already offers ground coffee, but the pods are meant to be more convenient for customers who want to drink Panera coffee at home. The coffee is from Distant Lands Coffee, based in Texas.

The pods are currently available at Supervalue, Save Mart, Hy-Vee, Dierbergs and select Winn-Dixie locations.

“With Panera Single-Serve Cups we are offering them the same fresh coffee experience in their own kitchen,” Stephanie Crimmins, vice president, said in a statement.

St. Louis-based Panera reported a profit of $43 million on revenue of $572.5 million for the quarter ended Sept. 24. But with just a 1.7 percent rise in comparable same-store sales, company executives are taking “deliberate steps” to drive transactions and add operational capabilities.

Overall, single-cup brewing has taken off in recent years, and now accounts for 13 percent of the market, according to research firm IBISWorld.

“Consumers are increasingly demanding specialized, high-quality coffee products, particularly in single use servings,” analyst IBISWorld Sarah Turk wrote in September.

In October, local coffee roaster Ronnoco Coffee Co. disclosed its own plans to launch a “K-cup” next year. “They’re very much on trend,” said Scott Meader, who is CEO of the $60 million company, at the time.
But Panera may have a harder sell, according to Jack Russo, an analyst with Edward Jones who covers Starbucks.

“Panera is not known really for their coffee but for their sandwiches and breads,” he said in an email message. “But it is worth a try and this can be (a) profitable, high margin business for them if it works out.

Original article can be located here: http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog/2013/11/panera-launches-single-serve-coffee-pods.html

Soup From A Coffeemaker, Anyone? Green Mountain Will Start Selling Campbell Soup K-Cups

If you’ve never looked at your coffee pot as a means of making soup…well, you’re probably like everyone else.

Campbell Soup CPB -2.42% and Green Mountain Coffee GMCR -1.65% Roasters would like to change that mindset. Green Mountain hopes to, ahem, soup up the offerings for its Keurig coffeemaker and will partner with Campbell to sell K-Cups that will create instant soup. Each package would include the ordinary K-Cups as well as packets of dry pasta and vegetables to add to your steaming hot mug of soup.

Hopes are that the first three flavors will come in 2014. No exact date was given, and chicken noodle was the only one of the three flavors mentioned. The companies expect the Campbell K-Cups would be sold with other K-Cups rather than in the grocery-store soup aisle. Campbell CEO Denise Morrison this afternoon described the K-Cups as a reflection of the company’s initiative to expand “into higher-growth spaces.”

Morrison has tried her best to stir the pot at Campbell since assuming the top job in 2011. Not that she had much choice to do otherwise. Campbell’s iconic red-and-white cans don’t sell like they used to–and they've been nudged from their place in American pantries. In response, Morrison rolled back a drive into low-sodium soup (it surprised people and raised questions they hadn't thought about), and Campbell snapped up Bolthouse Farms, which gives the soupmaker access to the fast-growing packaged fresh-food market. Morrison also oversaw the development of 50 or so new products, including soup-in-a-bag to market at young people–a crowd presumably too busy to pour soup from a can into a bowl; instead they would simply need to warm the bag.

Along with soup in a sack, there’s now soup in a … tiny plastic cylinder. Green Mountain has already brought Dunkin Brands and Starbucks SBUX -0.16% on board to sell branded K-Cups, and there’s a concrete reason for Green Mountain to work at cooking up these partnerships. With patent exclusivity gone for the K-Cup, competitors threaten to grind away at Green Mountain’s top place in the $1 billion single-serve coffee market. Green Mountain entered the industry in 2002 when the bean roaster bought 41% of Keurig Inc., a coffee-machine manufacturer, for $14.4 million, and then four years later, bought the rest of Keurig. Sold using a razor-blade model, Green Mountain’s Keurig coffeemakers boosted sales by as much as 65% a year.

Can we even call the Keurig a coffeemaker now? Must we say things like coffee-soup-maker? Apparently, yes.

Reach Abram Brown at abrown@forbes.com.