Au Bon Pain Locates In Lifestyle Centers
Au Bon Pain carefully selects lifestyle centers for its new Bistro concept.
Susan H. Fishman

Inside an Au Bon Pain location.

Boston-based Au Bon Pain, the café known for its freshly baked bread, is offering suburban customers a new kind of café that encourages longer, lingering stays. Growth of the new concept, as well as traditional Au Bon Pain cafés, is in high gear, and the company is carefully selecting its new locales.

Au Bon Pain was bought by London-based Compass Group PLC, a multinational contract and catering specialist known as the largest food service company in the world, in 1998. But in 2005, Au Bon Pain bought back the brand, leaving Compass with a 25 percent stake in the company.

“When we were part of Compass, they would slot us in if they saw opportunities, but it was not a growth strategy; it was just a maintenance strategy on the existing cafes we had,” says Vice President Corey Andrews. “After buying ourselves back, the first priority was to get our own financials in order and then to start to grow again.”

Today, Au Bon Pain has grown to more than 200 locations, operating in the United States, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Company-owned U.S. cafés are concentrated in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington. New cafés will be opening this year in Kuwait and Japan.

Au Bon Pain is targeting suburban locations with its new Bistro Au Bon Pain concept.

Au Bon Pain operates in seven domestic corporate markets, and within those seven markets, in six different trade channels, including business and industry, or downtown office buildings; hospitals’ transportation centers; universities; malls/retail centers and will soon begin opening in lifestyle centers. The first lifestyle center café will open this November in West Hartford, Connecticut, at Blue Back Square.

The new suburban café concept, called “Bistro Au Bon Pain,” is designed for the suburban, higher-end, fashion-anchored lifestyle center and caters to families who really want a true, quick-casual dining experience, according to Andrews.

“It’s for people who want to come in, sit down and relax but don’t want the length of a typical casual restaurant or as extensive a menu or higher prices,” he notes.

Bistro Au Bon Pain is larger than an urban office building Au Bon Pain and features an expanded color palate, integrating soft aqua shades into Au Bon Pain’s traditional Provençal blue and sunflower yellow color scheme. Coffees, smoothies, juices, teas and cold beverages such as the café’s Iced and Frozen Mocha Blasts will have a featured presence in the café’s new floor plan. As part of the company’s focus on nutrition, recipes for muffins and bagels have been revised to be zero grams trans fat. Other offerings include more flavorful croissants, baked Focaccia sandwiches, new salads and more varieties of Au Bon Pain signature soups. In addition, nutrition kiosks have been added to the cafés to allow customers the information to make the right choices.

Expanding on its award-winning Nutrition Kiosk, Au Bon Pain has launched a Kids Nutrition Kiosk in its suburban and hospital locations. The children’s version, designed for 4- to 9-year-olds, includes interactive games intended to teach the basics of making healthy meal choices.

The design of the Bistro concept was modeled after the “old-world bakeries,” says Andrews.

Au Bon Pain’s growth is in high gear.

“We wanted it to be inviting, where people would feel comfortable coming in and sitting and staying for a while. To that end, we’ve used more bench and booth seating, softer chairs; darker, warmer colors; softer materials and a comfy chair area. And all of the bistros will feature free Wi-Fi. We like to think of it as inviting guests into our home.”

This calendar year, Au Bon Pain has opened five new cafés, including locations at The Boston Children’s Museum; the Charles River in Boston, which is a typical downtown office building site; Philadelphia International Airport; Pentagon City near Washington, D.C.; and Natick Mall in the Boston area, which will open this month.

“The Bistro will make up about 30 percent of our growth over the next 5 years, and that’s more due to the types of locations we’re searching for rather than the concept itself,” notes Andrews. “We’re being very selective in going into the larger, national anchored fashion centers. So the availability of shopping centers for us is limited for the Bistro concept.”

The typical Au Bon Pain will continue to open in the company’s existing geographies in urban trade channels; however, around 2010, the company plans to open one to two new markets for traditional, company-owned Au Bon Pains and Bistro Au Bon Pains. Currently, the company is split evenly between franchises and company-owned locations.

“As we go forward, that ratio will stay roughly the same initially and then franchise development will accelerate a bit faster than corporate development,” adds Andrews.

With its new Bistro concept, Au Bon Pain may provide customers the choice to sit and stay or grab and go, but at the end of the day it gets down to menu and food selection, says Andrews.

“We have innovative options; we’re a great, healthy alternative to the typical fast food. And customers can use us in different ways at different times.”


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