Panera RISE Targets $7 Billion by 2028 With Hospitality-First Reset

When Ambition Meets Warmth

On November 18, 2025, Panera Bread lifted the cloche on “Panera RISE,” a multi-year transformation with an unmistakable aroma of intent: systemwide sales to “over $7 billion by 2028,” up from “approximately $6 billion in 2024” per Technomic estimates. The design is classical in its symmetry—four pillars set the table: Refreshing the menu, Igniting value, Serving guests with excellence, and Expanding the network. At its heart, the plan re-centers hospitality as both compass and cadence. CEO Paul Carbone cast the frame in human terms, invoking “Panera Warmth,” positioning the “guest at the very center,” and reimagining cafés as an “everyday oasis.” The aspiration is explicit—“reclaim our position as the industry leader in fast casual”—tying the romance of service to the rigors of accountability. The connective tissue is a service ethos braided into operations and product, an insistence that the feel of the experience must be as carefully engineered as the food. The strategy reads like a menu of measured abundance: tangible quality upgrades, moderated beverage innovation, staffing that restores visible care, and a real estate plan to make the experience legible at scale. It is a bid to replace fatigue with ritual, transforming transaction into respite. Analysis: The pairing of a numeric target with hospitality language establishes both a performance mandate and a cultural reset; centering the guest across all pillars provides a clear rubric for execution and evaluation.

The Operator’s Hand

The plan’s tempo reflects its conductor. Paul Carbone stepped in as interim CEO on January 7, 2025 and took the permanent post on March 25, 2025, bringing experience that includes serving as CFO of Dunkin’ Brands and roles in consumer goods and retail. He positioned RISE as the movement to “reclaim our position as the industry leader in fast casual,” not a flourish but an engine designed to reenergize a nearly four-decade-old brand. His public remarks in Las Vegas at the Restaurant Finance and Development Conference earlier in the month lingered on store modernization and enhanced customer service—signals that the reset would favor fundamentals over gimmickry. The November launch consolidated these themes into a single score, turning conference notes into a published arrangement with milestones attached. In doing so, Panera gave stakeholders a piece to follow and a tempo to measure. There’s a sense of calibration in this chronology: leadership settled, priorities articulated, levers identified, then a formal unveiling. It suggests an operator’s patience—an insistence that the dining room feel and the menu build are as deliberate as a well-timed course. Analysis: Carbone’s tenure and prior operator-side experience create continuity for a turnaround that fuses service, quality, and design; the alignment between conference messaging and RISE indicates a staged approach rather than a one-off announcement.

Abundance Returns to the Bowl

Under “Refreshing the menu,” Panera commits to elevating food quality across all dayparts, increasing ingredient abundance and distinctiveness, and reinforcing bakery leadership with a confident beverage portfolio. The direction responds to missteps that dulled perception: external reports note Carbone’s criticism of prior cost-cutting—such as replacing romaine with iceberg lettuce and reducing portions—and his pledge to reverse course with a return to fully romaine salads and an increase in ingredients “from five to eight per salad.” Precision meets pragmatism in the details. Beginning early 2026, Panera plans to slice cherry tomatoes and avocados in salads, a small but meaningful cue that speaks to care and convenience. The sensory effect is tangible: crisper leaves, brighter cut fruit, a bowl that looks and eats like an invitation rather than a compromise. Beverages follow the same ethos of considered choice. From October 15 through January 6, the brand is testing specialty drinks: Frescas—caffeine-free flavors such as Cherry Lime and Pomegranate Hibiscus—and Energy Refreshers, lightly caffeinated options like Dragonfruit Sunset and Passionfruit Paradise. These chef-crafted, fruit-forward offerings broaden occasions while providing lower-caffeine alternatives after Charged Lemonades were “pulled in mid‑2024 due to lawsuits over high caffeine levels.” Analysis: Reversing unpopular shortcuts and expanding moderated-caffeine beverages answer guest feedback with visible, flavorful changes designed to rebuild trust and encourage repeat visits essential to the 2028 sales goal.

From Kiosk to Counter

The service pillar restores human presence as the center of the room. RISE calls for boosting front‑of‑house staffing to pour “Panera Warmth” into each interaction and to recast bakery‑cafes as “everyday oases.” The intention is to answer guest complaints about understaffing and an over-reliance on self‑service kiosks that left visitors searching for help—concerns Carbone has acknowledged in recent interviews. Design follows function. Panera plans comprehensive modernization across company‑owned and franchise locations for operational consistency, with a small‑box format developed earlier in the year to quicken entry into new markets while refining kitchen operations and design. The canvas is large: as of October 28, 2025, the company operated 2,239 bakery‑cafes across 48 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Ontario, Canada. If the menu supplies abundance, service supplies cadence—more faces at the counter, clearer pathways through the café, spaces that favor lingering over rushing. The reset is less about novelty than about a return to rituals that make everyday dining feel cared for. Analysis: Combining labor investment with modernization yields a unified execution model; across a wide footprint, consistent service and layout improvements can lift throughput, guest satisfaction, and revenue per location.

Promises You Can See

RISE speaks in a language that leaves little room for ambiguity. Carbone’s vow to “reclaim our position as the industry leader in fast casual” is not floated alone; it is tethered to a lexicon of hospitality—“Panera Warmth,” the “guest at the very center,” the café as “everyday oasis.” The sentiment gains weight through operational pledges: more front‑of‑house staffing, modernization, and a visible upgrade in menu abundance. This pairing of words and mechanics matters. It instructs franchisees and employees on the behaviors expected in the dining room and on the line, and it tells guests what to look for when they arrive. A salad should be visibly fuller, a beverage list should offer lower‑caffeine alternatives, and the presence of staff should be immediately felt. In that sense, the rhetoric is less marketing than choreography—an invitation to judge the performance by concrete markers that show up on trays and in the tenor of service. Analysis: Clear, repeated signals align stakeholders around specific priorities; by linking rhetoric to observable changes in build, staffing presence, and design, Panera clarifies where and how progress should appear.

Dates That Matter

The turnaround’s structure is temporal as much as strategic. RISE debuted on November 18, 2025 with the north star of “over $7 billion by 2028,” a target that steps up from “approximately $6 billion in 2024.” Leadership continuity brackets the launch: Carbone began as interim CEO on January 7, 2025 and became permanent on March 25, 2025. Product cadence adds near-term visibility. Specialty beverages are in test from October 15 through January 6—a bounded window that invites trial and signals speed. Salad refinement continues in early 2026 with the slicing of cherry tomatoes and avocados, a quiet but precise upgrade. The mid‑2024 removal of Charged Lemonades after lawsuits over high caffeine levels helps explain the moderated approach to caffeination in the new drinks. Real estate forms the stage: 2,239 locations as of October 28, 2025 define the operational reach for modernization and the small‑box format’s expansion ambitions. Each date invites a question: what changed in the room, on the menu, and in the register? Analysis: Sequencing leadership stabilization, product tests, and service redesign promotes iterative learning; the runway to 2028 offers time while imposing checkpoints for tangible progress.

A Field of Rivals

Panera’s reset arrives in a dining landscape shaped by inflationary pressures, labor constraints, supply volatility, and softened traffic. The chain’s own stagnation—a “roughly 5 % decline in sales to about $6.1 billion”—has loosened its grip on leadership, as rivals including Chipotle and Panda Express surge. The timing, then, reads as both necessity and opportunity. Across the industry, turnarounds have rediscovered the power of fundamentals. Starbucks’ “Back to Starbucks,” TGI Fridays’ menu overhaul post‑bankruptcy, and Dine Brands’ dual‑brand IHOP‑Applebee’s model all suggest a return to clarity: sharpen the offer, refine the experience, and make the value legible. Panera’s package—affordability emphasis paired with quality reinvestment, a revived hospitality stance, and design modernization—signals an intent to correct past missteps while matching the discipline of its peers. Launching late in 2025 gives the brand a defined window to demonstrate momentum ahead of 2028, but in a crowded field of resets the differentiator will be consistency across thousands of cafés, not novelty. Analysis: The competitive tempo raises the standard for execution; delivering the same elevated experience everywhere becomes the lever that can separate Panera in a fast‑casual category under strain.

The Proof Is Visible

Not every variable has been weighed on the public scale. The RISE materials outline pillars, commitments, and select product tests, but they do not specify staffing counts, capital deployment by initiative, unit growth targets by market, or quantified service benchmarks. What is explicit reads like a checklist guests can taste and see: romaine returning, salads moving “from five to eight per salad,” and early 2026 slicing for cherry tomatoes and avocados. In the near term, the most honest indicators will be tangible. Does the salad arrive more abundant? Are Frescas and Energy Refreshers available during the October 15–January 6 window? Is there a front‑of‑house presence that animates the promise of an “everyday oasis”? These are the daily proofs that translate strategy into habit. The lesson is elegantly simple: a hospitality‑first reset succeeds when restraint and generosity are held in balance—better ingredients without excess, warmer service without friction, design that guides rather than shouts. Panera’s outlook couples an explicit milestone with a back‑to‑basics philosophy spanning menu, service, and layout across 2,239 units. The crown it seeks will be won not in a single announcement, but in countless small adjustments honored every day. Analysis: Monitoring visible changes offers a practical way to track momentum; if the stated pillars become consistent daily execution, the brand has a path to regain standing by 2028.