Business leaders should use their positions of power to enact positive change in the world, according to Niren Chaudhary, chairman of the board of Panera Brands.
“There is so much strife in the world around us right now,” Chaudhary said. “We can’t do a lot about that, but we can do everything within the companies and the enterprises that we serve. Why can’t we—as leaders—make our companies a shining example of the world that we wish to see?”
Members of Boston College’s Chief Executives (CEO) Club—a Carroll School of Management forum hosting prominent CEOs—gathered on Monday afternoon at the Boston Harbor Hotel to listen to Chaudhary discuss the challenges of operating Panera during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[We] lost between 50 to 75 percent of our sales,” Chaudhary said. “Suddenly, you’re wondering what on Earth you’re supposed to do. There is no playbook here. This hasn’t happened before.”
To grapple with this uncertainty, Panera needed to refine its mission as a company by building trust with its employees and customers, according to Chaudhary.
“Let’s look upon this as a unique opportunity for us to build trust with all our stakeholders, our customers, our community, our employees,” he said. “How you treat them now [is how] they will treat us once the pandemic is over,” he said.
One new initiative the company took on was selling their excess ingredients through contactless pickup and delivery, Chaudhary said.
“We had so many ingredients in our stores that were going on the shelf life, and so we rapidly opened a Panera grocery business,” he said. “People were coming to the drive through and asking for milk and eggs.”
Panera also began providing meals for children in need, Chaudhary said.
“There were school children with no access to school meals, so we started giving school meals to the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] for the state of Ohio,” Chaudhary said.
Additionally, while the COVID-19 pandemic led Panera to lay off 35,000 employees, Chaudhary said the company aided these workers in finding new jobs.
“I saw on the news that Walmart and CVS were looking for 100,000 employees, so we got in touch with them and said, ‘Could you please hire our former employees?’” Chaudhary said.
Chaudhary also said that Panera is turning its focus to the impact food production makes on climate change.
“I came across a scan a few years ago that 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are caused through food production,” Chaudhary said. “It was absolutely imperative that we did something to change, and therefore are committed to be climate positive by 2050.”
Chaudhary said that Panera has long-term commitments to combat climate change, such as informing customers about food’s impact on the environment and developing more “climate positive foods,” which remove more greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere than they produce.
“We discovered that almost 55 percent of the foods we serve at Panera [are] climate positive,” Chaudhary said. “We have branded those products ‘Coolfoods.’”
Chaudhary emphasized the importance of companies assessing their missions, values, and goals while navigating important issues.
“Companies should be very congruent to who they are and what they do,” Chaudhary said. “If there is a violation of who they are and what they truly stand for, then they should express what they feel.”
