Off Brand
We Have Officially Hit Peak Subscription
If Panera thinks it can sell $8.99 subscriptions, who can’t?
Would you subscribe to a coffee? No, not a monthly box of fancy ground coffee in the mail — although obviously that’s a thing. What about an everyday cup of coffee from a mass-casual chain. Like Panera. Because now that’s a thing, too.
If you “subscribe” to MyPanera+ Coffee, for $8.99 a month, you get unlimited coffee (or tea) at the pervasive sandwich chain. Panera CEO Niren Chaudhary told Business Insider that this subscription experiment may be just the beginning. “We have started the journey off with coffee, but we are going to be watching very carefully what kinds of food attachments are happening,” he said. (By “food attachments” he evidently means: What edible items are customers buying with their coffee?)
Lately, it seems that everyone has jumped on the subscription-based business bandwagon. Software publishers like Adobe and Microsoft have successfully moved from selling users a product to in effect requiring them to subscribe to a service. Trendy e-commerce subscription businesses delivering monthly boxes of pet toys or meal kits or wine have grown to become an estimated $10 billion category. Plus, you can subscribe to a regularly updated heap of movies and shows from…
