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Feature Article, February 2006
Beyond The Bagel
Bruegger's Baked Fresh revamps its bakery-café concept, branching into moremarkets with greater menu selection.
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New prototype design for Bruegger's Baked Fresh, a bakery-café concept based in Vermont.
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The business of bagels is looking bright for Bruegger's Baked Fresh. With growth numbers continuing to trend on the positive and a full-scale 2-year image revitalization nearing completion, the Vermont-based brand is on the cusp of achieving a second wind. Currently located in strip centers, suburban and urban central business districts and high-traffic city and suburban neighborhoods from coast-to-coast, the nearly 250 franchise and corporate-owned bakeries that comprise Bruegger's Baked Fresh all began with a single item in 1983, the company's signature bagel — fresh dough kettle boiled and then baked. Twenty-three years later, patrons stepping through the doors of their local bakery-café (which also includes kiosk and self-service units, as well as secondary shopping area locations) find not only an expanded menu of sandwiches, salads, breakfast choices, hot and iced coffees and dessert selections, but a completely repackaged look to help direct the company's sails.
The reoutfitting of Bruegger's began immediately after the organization's purchase by Boca Raton, Florida-based Sun Capital Partners in late 2003. Various test market locations would reemerge months later with a new look and feel that included natural wood furniture, soft lighting and a new color palette, in addition to new menu products. According to James Greco, CEO of Bruegger's Baked Fresh, all company-owned units had completed renovations by the end of 2005, with the remaining franchise units scheduled to follow suit in 2006.
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Bruegger's expanded menu now offers more than its signature bagel; it also features sandwiches, salads, breakfast items, coffee and dessert as well.
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In addition, Bruegger's continues to move beyond the bagel with a wealth of new and revamped breakfast, lunch and dinner items. For example, the stone-hearth breads introduced in 2004 initially offered customers a different variety of baked goods. In 2005, however, the brand created a new catalogue of sandwiches using its specific flavor combinations of the breads with other ingredients to provide more options. The debut of made-to-order salad selections also freshened up Bruegger's menu in 2005, allowing customers to choose the ingredients they liked from an options bar, after which counter servers toss the newly constructed salad in stainless steel bowls and transfer the meal to a plate. Dessert choices also doubled last year, and the coffee line that debuted in 2004 made way for a cooler counterpart with Bruegger's specialty flavored iced coffees. Finally, a selection of Bruegger's breakfast wraps will debut in 2006 and include eggs, cheese, vegetables and more encased in one of the bakery's low-carbohydrate wraps. Greco attributes much of the success from Bruegger's current 2-year comeback trail to these changes. “We had seven consecutive quarters of positive same store sales numbers,” he says. “The new menu items and our sales numbers have done really well [in 2005].”
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Bruegger's Baked Fresh has kiosk/self-serve units in some locations.
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Bruegger's company-wide sales totaled approximately $155 million in 2005 — a slight increase over the year before. The average customer check of $5.50 (also an increase over previous years) generated an average unit volume of $640,000. The chain plans to add 25 expansions in 2006 (10 expansions joined the brand in 2005) and has signed 60 franchises that committed to build a total of 40 bakery units by 2007. Greco says the geography of the organization's current system is what will dictate its future growth. Specifically, the company plans to expand in market locations in and around where Bruegger's units are already in place — North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, for example — as well as where customer traffic has proven good for the chain. This, Greco says, will “fill in the gaps.”
Such positive 2-year momentum, gained in large part by the company's hallmark products, is what Greco feels will differentiate Bruegger's from similar restaurants like Panera Bread and Einstein Bros. Bagels. “It starts with a signature product and then extends to everything else we do,” Greco explains. “Our consumer research shows that the public has a very high opinion of our product, and in everything else we do, we strive to reach that level of expectation.”
— Anastasia Parsons
©2006 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.
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