Rebuilding the Burger: How Panera Bread Elevates Menu Insights

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, host Karen Lynch sits down with Jairus Lofton, Senior Manager of Strategic Insights at Panera Bread, to unpack how human-centered insights power menu innovation in QSR and fast casual. Jairus traces his journey from Hershey to Sonic, McDonald’s, and now Panera, sharing a behind-the-scenes case study on rebuilding Sonic’s core burger from the ground up using guest feedback, quant modeling, and rigorous testing.

He explains how culinary inspiration, trend data, and real-world operations come together to decide what actually makes it onto the menu—and stays there. Jairus also talks about serving younger consumers like Gen Z without chasing every shiny trend, why brand authenticity matters more than ever, how AI fits (and doesn’t) into his process, and the philosophy of “flexibility with rigor” that guides his work and advice for other insights professionals.

Key Discussion Points:

• How strategic insights at Panera Bread shape menu innovation, from guest feedback to foresight and trend spotting.
• A deep-dive case study: rebuilding Sonic’s flagship burger based on consumer dissatisfaction, competitive benchmarking, and CLT/taste tests.
• The complex cross-functional ecosystem behind “menu magic”: insights, strategy, culinary, supply chain, and marketing working in lockstep.
• Balancing trend reports, social listening, and culinary creativity to decide which food trends are worth scaling—and which to skip.
• Adapting to Gen Z’s desires for transparency, customization, and unique flavors while staying authentic to the Panera brand.
• Jairus’s advice to insights pros: cross-industry networking, borrowing ideas from other categories, and practicing “flexibility with rigor.”

Resources & Links:

• Panera Bread – Brand & Menu
• The Hershey Company (early career in retail sales & CPG)
• CAVA (example of fast-casual brand resonating with younger consumers)
• 7 Brew Coffee (emerging drive-thru coffee brand mentioned in the episode)

You can reach out to Jairus Lofton on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Jairus Lofton for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

[00:00:09] Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m Karen Lynch, happy to be hosting today and happy to be talking to the guest. This is actually the first time we’re talking, so you guys are seeing some raw conversation ahead. But I am speaking with the Senior Manager, Strategic Insights at Panera Bread, talking to Jairus Lofton. And the thing is, if you knew me at all, you’d know that, like, one of my favorite things is this, like autumn squash soup that they have there. And this time of year, when I start to get cold, I get a little obsessed, and I feel like I could have that every day. So, when you came across my, kind of, news feed, I’m like, yes, I want to talk to this person. I want to get myself some soup [laugh]. So, welcome to the Greenbook Podcast.

[00:00:53] Jairus: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. And you’re in good company. It’s one of our most popular soups, and my wife asks me every year, like, “When are we going to get that soup? Like, what day is it actually launching on?” So, you are in good company [laugh].

[00:01:07] Karen: So, good. Excellent, excellent. I love hearing that actually. One of my little things about me is, like, I love when I find myself in, like, data. So, if you say I’m in good company, I’m like, oh, I’m in that data. A little secret thing about me. Let me tell the audience a little bit about you and why you’re here. Like I said, your Senior Manager, Strategic Insights, which already has me saying, “Ooh, let’s dig into what differentiates strategic insights from insights,” but we’ll get there. You know, you’re leading innovation in the menu assortment there at Panera, you know, getting insights to drive all that. We’ll talk about that a little bit. Formerly at McDonald’s. I’m going to just stop and let you take over because you can add so much more to your bio. But why don’t you, kind of, tell everybody a little bit about your career journey there?

[00:01:52] Jairus: Sure. So, like you said, I am at Panera Bread now, formerly at McDonald’s. I’ve been in the QSR, which stands for Quick Service Restaurants—not fast food; quick service—QSR, fast-casual world for a while now and then also kind of in food and beverage, too, starting all the way back in [sigh]2014 when I joined the Hershey Company on the sales side as a Retail Sales Rep. I managed a huge territory of different clients that I would go and try to convince them to put out Hershey products. Which is not that hard, really, when you think about it. Reese’s are pretty, pretty great. And from that, I had the opportunity to join Sonic Drive-in. So, I was at Sonic for a little while on the insights side, managing the brand tracker, managing the consumer feedback through our receipt-based survey. And that’s really when I got the opportunity to jump on the innovation side as well. So, since that point, it’s just been—it’s kind of felt like a rocket to me, just going from opportunity to opportunity and getting to understand consumer insights. What are consumers wanting from fast casual and quick-service brands and trying to build really good, delicious products, most of which I get to try, and getting to dig into data. So, it’s kind of the best of all possible worlds.

[00:03:20] Karen: Awesome. You know, it’s a sweet spot for me. You don’t know this, but I, prior to joining Greenbook, I was a qualitative researcher, and I spent a lot of time in food innovation. One of my best clients was a food service organization that also had some retail brands, but Ventura Foods out in California—

[00:03:38] Jairus: Oh yeah.

[00:03:39] Karen: —which you perhaps know about. And so, we did a lot of innovation work in the food service space. I could tell you about some ethnography that we did that was more fun than anything. I love that space, and actually, I loved the concept of what all went into, kind of… menu innovation. So again, some of the appeal to even talking to you is just, it’s interesting, right? Every human being, you know, has had probably ample opportunity to just pick from a menu, you know, God willing, the privileged ones. But tell me a little bit about how it all works, like, how it all comes together—strategy and innovation and insights—comes together to inform those selections.

[00:04:25] Jairus: It’s a huge mess, [laugh] honestly, but in kind of the best possible way because it really is just this kind of marriage of things like ethnographies that you’re talking about, so that qualitative work, where you’re we’re really understanding, how do people think, how do they operate in their daily lives, what’s, kind of, the richness of consumer interactions and desires that we can understand, paired with our quantitative data, as we’re looking at large trends and we’re trying to understand what ingredients are consumers wanting these days, how do our different products on a menu play together? If I introduce a brand new item, what is that going to cannibalize from my current sales? And really, how do I keep consumers excited about the products that we’re offering, and creating that, kind of, really good mix between current products, new products, that innovation that’s going to keep them excited, but at the same time just, you know, building up the brand, too. So, it’s this really interesting mix where we’re doing a little bit of foresight. We are doing a little bit of, you know, 20/20 hindsight, trying to understand what worked, what didn’t work, and trying to plot out the future, then at the same time, validating all the work that we’re doing at constantly just iterative steps. So, it is very exciting because it’s just constantly changing. Consumer palettes are always progressing, and then there’s new trends all the time. And it’s the qui—the huge question that we have to face as big brands is, which trends do we hop on, which ones do we think are going to be, you know, maybe peter out over time, and then where do we want to, kind of put a stake in the ground for our products and what we stand for with consumers, all the same time, like, trying to maybe predict what are you going to want next year? So, it’s very, very complex, but really, really interesting, really exciting too.

[00:06:27] Karen: It’s so interesting and maybe because I’m primed to have thought about some of this area of work in the last, you know, few decades of my career, but I was in a coffee shop last week—just a local, non-franchised coffee shop in our town—and there was, like, a turmeric honey coffee on the menu. And I stared at it and stared at it and stared at it, and ended up going with a lavender latte, which I happen to love the lavender lattes. Anyway, but I stared at this turmeric honey, and I kept thinking, I know why this is here, and I’m sure the chef who was creating this, or the barista who was creating this, like, I’m sure they’re on to something, but that seems like one of those moments of discernment, right, of turmeric is hot right now, you know? Like, we want to get on that, but does, you know, does the patron really want that? And you’re constantly discerning which are the trends we hop on, which are going to, you know, be really exciting for people, and which are going to be like, yeah, no, I don’t need that in my product. So, no small thing that you’re doing there.

[00:07:35] Jairus: Yeah, it’s crazy, it’s complex, and also part of it is understanding, what can we maybe deliver to consumers that they don’t know that they want yet, too. So, it’s not just, hey, what’s trending, but what can we maybe be the pioneers of too, and that’s always difficult to predict.

[00:07:56] Karen: Okay, so you’re now doing this in several food places, and I was sitting there thinking, like, oh, we could go back and talk about, you know, some, you know, some things I know, you know about that how consumers feel about those Sonic ice cubes, for example. We could go there, [laugh] we could talk about—

[00:08:12] Jairus: It’s a big thing.

[00:08:14] Karen: —you know, who likes McDonald’s coffee versus Starbucks versus, you know, some of the other coffees. But what I want to know is there anything that kind of stands out to you, any kind of new menu initiative that you, somehow or another, had a hand in that, you know? You’re like, God, I really, you know, I have this example I could share with you about something that resonates with me because I had a part in it.

[00:08:34] Jairus: Yeah. I’ve been really lucky to be on a ton of really, really interesting projects over the years, ones that have shown up on menus and are, like, are still around. You mentioned Sonic ice cubes. I did a lot of work on Sonic ice cubes. People do absolutely love them. I think we’ve gotten shout-outs from, like, Matthew McConaughey on that, you know, got to get that good Sonic ice.

[00:08:59] Karen: Yep, yep.

[00:09:01] Jairus: I think the biggest one that stands out to me, one of the ones that I’m most proud of is, so while working at Sonic Drive-in—it’s a burger QSR chain, right? So, hamburger QSR competes with the likes of Burger King, McDonald’s, The Habit, even in-N-Out to a smaller degree, but what we began to realize as I was there, I was a couple years into the role, we started to notice, kind of just, like, this broad dissatisfaction with our keystone product, with the burger itself. We were getting a lot of complaints on our consumer feedback lines, on the receipt-based survey, people calling in wanting refunds on the product sometimes. And they were really just expressing dissatisfaction with that product. Now, like the brand relies on that product, and it really is—if you’re not getting the burger right in your burger chain, there’s something wrong, right? So, we really wanted to take a step back and understand, okay, what is going on with our burger? Not just, you know, inwardly, like, what do we think we can diagnose, but how do we compare to all the other players that we’re competing against? So, we undertook this huge quantitative study to look at the drivers of burger satisfaction. There are more than you think there are [laugh]. Like, there are things like lettuce: is it whole leaf, is it shredded, the crispness of the lettuce, the bite that you get from it, the melt of the cheese. And so, we basically, we boiled it down to 10 or 11 different attributes that were really the key ones, and we found that we were lacking on all but maybe two.

[00:10:39] Karen: Oh, that’s so interesting.

[00:10:42] Jairus: So, we had these areas we knew where we weren’t executing, and so then we undertook this super big project. It took, I don’t know how long, well over a year from the time that we figured out that we had an issue to the time that we really made meaningful improvements. But we, essentially in partnership with all the other teams, supply chain, with our culinary team, we rebuilt the Sonic burger from the ground up, rethinking every aspect of it, redoing everything, getting qualitative, iterative feedback with small test samples in focus groups to doing large-scale CLT, Central Location Tests, which are taste tests, basically. And understanding how can we successfully execute a burger that’s not just in a test kitchen is going to do really well because when those chefs are cooking something, it’s fantastic every time. But when you put it out in the field and we’re asking folks day in and day out to cook this burger in our kitchens, are they going to be able to really execute that to a degree that we’re going to be happy with and consumers are going to like? And we arrived at something that is, I mean, was miles ahead of what we had. That was really, really fun because how often do you get to work on the biggest product that your brand [crosstalk 00:12:01]?

[00:12:01] Karen: Yeah, yeah. And were you there long enough to then kind of see the feedback switch? Did it change afterwards?

[00:12:07] Jairus: Huge change, yeah. So, I was there another year or so, after Inspire had acquired the brand. I stuck around for a bit longer, and yeah, we saw some real meaningful change. In fact, Sonic throughout—this was right before the pandemic, kind of, happened, and throughout that first year, year-and-a-half of that event, Sonic was just doing gangbusters, not just because of its unique model, with a drive-in, but also, we think because of the quality improvements that we undertook and that real dedication to, hey, we figured out a problem, we went out and solved it, and we put that out for consumers. They notice stuff like that.

[00:12:46] Karen: So, that’s a great example that shows kind of one of the things I want to talk to you about is, you know, in this complex system where it starts with feedback, right, so now we’ve got real customer feedback to work on and to look at, but it goes to all of the different types of testing that you end up do to get something to go to market. It is a very complex ecosystem. So, what do you think it really takes to navigate that space, for those people that are like, “Ah, maybe that’s an area I want to move into,” for example? Like, what does it take to get from insight—or from challenge, I should say—all the way to, like, now we’ve got a solution on our menu.

[00:13:26] Jairus: Yeah. Time and patience [laugh] are key. Yeah, I think being able to build a case first. So, there are things that you can, you know, identify, kind of from your gut feel, but if you don’t have any data behind it, you’re really not going to get any traction. And you really shouldn’t because the resources are pretty—you know, they’re all spoken for [laugh] a lot of times. There’s never a lack of things that you want to do and get after, right, so you need to come with data backed by consumer feedback, backed by other kinds of data points that you can point to and say, hey, here is a real thing that we need to get after, and here are some potential solutions that we can get after with it. It takes a lot of communication with your partners, with working with supply chain, the folks who are actually going to be sourcing this stuff for you, working with the culinary team who is developing these products, and working day-in and day-out to find something that meets the needs that you are communicating through the data, but also fits within all the strictures that they have, right? It something that has to fit within the DNA of the brand, that has to fit our cost structures, and has to deliver that consistency that we’re looking for. And then you’re working with your marketing and strategy folks. How are we going to talk about this? Are we going to talk about it? Is it a change that we’re just going to make and we’re just going to say it’s going to build over time with quality or is it something that, hey, we’re going to shout this from the rooftops that we’ve got this new solution that people are going to love, and you’re going to come back for this. So, it’s being really, really close in communication, and then having a super strong validation plan along the way. So, it’s not just we’ve identified this problem. We think this is a solution. Now, you have to go say, “Now, we can prove that this does actually solve the problem that we set out to solve.”

[00:15:26] Karen: Let’s dig into—you know, you mentioned some of the teams that you work with, and you know, I was going to talk about this a little bit later, but I want to go there now because you’re collaborating with these teams throughout. So, the teams are talking about, like, obviously marketing, obviously, you know, the R&D department, obviously, you mentioned strategy, and we’ve talked about when you’ve been on strategy versus kind of on strategic insights. Let’s just go there right now. Tell me how these departments come together, interplay, connect to make it all work for menu magic.

[00:15:58] Jairus: Yeah. It is kind of like an organic living thing. You are in constant the way it works ideally, you’re in constant communication with everybody, right, to the point where you’re kind of, you’re sick of seeing them because you’re on, like, the eighth call with them that day, but in a good way because you need to constantly be on the same page. You know, if there is new insights, if there is new testing that we’re doing, we are feeding into this feedback loop that eventually is going to produce this product that goes out into the market. So, we got to remain really tight. Part of that is, you know, kind of how our roles complement each other. So, when you are within a strategic insights area, your job is to understand not just insights that are going to be informative to building a really good product, but also which are the ones that are going to be the most helpful for, like, the business implications. So, if we’re trying to understand, let’s say, for instance—making it up—or launching some kind of new variety of bagel or bread or something, right? We don’t want to just know, hey, do people like this, is it possible to be developed, but we want to know how is this going to play with the rest of the items that we have on our menu. Well, from a strategy lens, you can make some hypotheses, but then from the insights part, it’s our job to go figure out, okay, we can do a menu simulator, and we can say this is what’s going to happen when we introduce this item on the menu. You know, it’s going to cannibalize from products, A, B, and C, but it’s not going to affect X, Y, Z over here, right? And we expect it to do this for consumer retention. So, it’s this really unique interplay where we’re jumping in on the insights side at various points all along the innovation pipeline to make sure that we’re validating what we’re trying to do, and that we’re also checking with consumers frequently to understand, is this something that you want? Is it motivating enough for you to purchase it? And then we’re working with our culinary teams, to say, this is the product that consumers are asking us for. This is the thing that you delivered. Here are the areas we need to optimize or improve, refine, and they’re going out and executing that. And then on the back end, once that’s finally released, then we’re saying, how well did we do, and what can we learn from that moving forward, too? So, it’s a process that never really ends, and there’s just a ton of communication, a ton of cross-pollination, and it really is a truly cross-functional process that ideally you have working.

[00:18:39] Karen: So, you know, kind of, question along those lines—also taking, you know, my previous life as a researcher, one of the firms I worked for, we did a lot of this work, too, where we were working with R&D departments, and then there’s these other marketing insights professionals who, you know, they’re looking at copy, they’re looking at ad testing, they’re looking at how they promote the brand, and, of course, the products on the menu. And in some organizations, they are in lockstep, and in other organizations, they seem to be on two concurrent paths and they’re not, [laugh] you know, they’re not necessarily communicating well. And I’ve had the privilege of working in both types of organizations. So, how is it—you know, in your world, is it ideal? Are those two functions coming together well, you know, the functions where it’s about strategy and innovation and R&D and product development, and then there’s, you know, those marketing functions, or the consumer insights that support marketing initiatives?

[00:19:36] Jairus: Yeah, I think, ideally, that is the way that it should work, where we’re talking to each other. It becomes very easy to become siloed, especially in really large organizations. You get super-focused on just what your path is or just what your work is, and not understanding that you might have insights that are going to help kind of unlock something for the other side. So, I think a good example of that is, as we look, you know, throughout different organizations, as you look to do the creative work, as you’re looking to talk about these products that have gone through this entire cycle of validation, it’s such a great practice to go back and ask, “Hey, what were people saying about this when they were tasting it in CLT, in that central location test? What do people think when you guys did that focus group? What were some of the verbatims you can give me that kind of encapsulates how folks believe this product is going to meet their needs in this specific way?” You know, because what you want to be true is that you want your marketing, you want your creative to reflect an accurate promise for that product. If you’re advertising, you know a product that somebody comes in and it’s a completely different experience, they’re not going to buy it again, and they’re probably going to buy it. So, making sure that you are actually fulfilling that product promise, that you’re executing on it, and that you’ve really done all of that robust research upfront to make sure that what you are releasing is a solid, solid product that you feel proud of, then I think that’s when everything is working perfectly in sync. Does it do that all the time? No, [laugh] but ideally and often it does work that way, where you know each side is really informing the other, and you end up with both a really cohesive marketing campaign for a product that works well.

[00:21:33] Karen: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I love that. And I’m also curious about something else, going back. When you were talking about your example, for instance, you know, at Sonic and the burger, and you were talking about, like, customer feedback that sort of is really at the heart of the business challenge, right, this is based on customer feedback, how much of what you do here at Panera is based on feedback, versus just, you know, the that trend work that you were talking about, or the, you know, creative thinking, or the ‘wouldn’t it be great if,’ that kind of wishful, wantful thinking that’s at the heart of innovation, where consumers might not even really have a need, but they don’t know what they don’t know. So, what’s the percentages for those in the work that you do?

[00:22:18] Jairus: It depends on the day [laugh]—

[00:22:21] Karen: Yeah.

[00:22:22] Jairus: And really, what we’re trying to get after, too. I think, you know, ideally, you’re trying to strike a really nice balance. Because if we’ve seen anything with, kind of, the internet age, is that, you know, there’s this thing we learned about in business school called the Bullwhip Effect, where, you know, one small indication can sometimes lead to, like, an outsized result because you think it’s indicative of a much larger problem. Part of the job we have for insights is, as we’re seeing those consumer signals, those guest signals, is that something that is actually indicative of a much larger issue? Is that feedback that is something we can really verify? Or is it something where, hey, somebody got a bad batch of something at some point, right? Or you know, someone wasn’t prepping something correctly and it’s not really indicative of a larger issue. Going back to the Sonic example, as we’re seeing those guest signals, we didn’t immediately jump in and commit all those resources, right? You want to have some patience—as difficult as it is, when you start to identify an issue, you want to have some patience—and make sure that the feedback is real and it’s something that you can actually action on. So, that’s why it was so important we did that extra step of actually looking at our product compared to our competitive set and understanding what is our relative performance. Are we executing or is there, you know, there’s no fire here, right? The answer we found is, like, there was a real issue. We needed to address that, and we wouldn’t have understand that if we didn’t get that guest signal originally, but sometimes, you know, if you do your due diligence, you also find out there’s not much here, maybe some things around the edges, but you’ve got to do that extra step just to confirm that it’s not just, you know, just a false signal, but there’s actually something there.

[00:24:16] Karen: Yeah. And you know, I’m also thinking about, you know the size of your organization and how many restaurants you have, and how many, I mean, in-store products that you have, too. Like, you know, if you don’t know Panera the brand and you don’t have one in your neighborhood, within two miles from your house, you may not know they’re also in the grocery stores, certainly here in the northeast, it’s everywhere. And you’re doing this on a national level too, so do you have kind of—who are the teams that are analyzing that feedback? Do you have data scientists on your team, for example, or are they on a CX team, and they funnel it to you and they become your stakeholders? Like, how does that work?

[00:24:56] Jairus:
Yeah, that’s a great question. What I’ll say is we have folks, kind of, at every point of potential guest interaction, right? So, we’re looking at what’s the feedback we’re getting from the in store experience? What’s the feedback we’re getting on our CPG, so our in store, consumer packaged good products, right? We are looking at what’s—and trying to pair that with what is the feedback that we were getting initially, in testing too, for these products now releasing. And yeah, absolutely, we have folks looking at the data. We have folks who are kind of, like, combing through all that stuff to make sure, you know, are we seeing anything that we need to address in any of our cafes or in our products at large. I’ll say, one of the things that we get the pleasure of focusing on because we get to do so much of that forward-looking work, is it’s probably less about being super responsive to something that might be happening in a cafe and more about anticipating the needs that consumers are asking us for. So, we try to see, you know, from a social aspect, what are people asking for in the cafes that they’re not getting today. We’re trying to serve those consumer needs in a lot of different ways. And, yeah, I think you mentioned our product assortment is pretty broad. We’ve got salads, we got sandwiches, breads, soups, we got breakfast items. So, there is this wide variety that we already have, and still we’re finding opportunities to meet guests’ needs that, you know, we haven’t met yet, or things that people remember from, like, 20 years ago they’re still asking us for today. So, it’s really exciting. There’s always going to be opportunity there, and we’re trying to pay attention as best as we can. But it’s a lot of information.

[00:26:51] Karen: It is. It is. And so, that’s all this exist—this is all the kind of existing data that you’re—that’s coming in regularly, and you’ve got people in place that are checking that out. Let’s talk about the other part of this, which is the more, kind of, inspirational, which I think is it’s less tangible, right, when you’re talking about trends. How do you or your team, or is it maybe just the strat team in general, like, how do they go after the trends? Like, what are some of the ongoing work that you do that bring—or maybe it’s things that you read, or maybe it’s, you know, reports that you subscribe to, or something. What can you share about how you get that kind of just inspiration in the world of trends and what’s happening in the culinary world?

[00:27:35] Jairus: I think we’re really blessed in a couple of ways. One is we have an extremely strong culinary team. I had the pleasure of working with our VP of culinary, Scott Uehlein, over at Sonic years ago—and he just rejoined us at Panera recently—and he’s one of those guys, along with everyone else on our culinary team who are just, like, really, like, visionary culinary experts. So, they are bringing stuff in I have never heard of, [laugh] honestly, and really new, interesting flavors that are unexpected, but also, kind of, the first time you try them you’re, like, you know what this tastes like it’s familiar, but it’s also something I have no idea what this is [laugh], and then remixing things in new and interesting ways. So, we have that aspect where we have some really, really, just super talented culinary experts who are bringing all this information into us. The other side of that is, you know, we have access to a lot of the same tools that a lot of other QSR brands have access to, all of the same kind of reports and stuff that are coming in and telling us, you know, what’s growing, what’s shrinking. For us, it’s about, you know, looking at those and pairing them alongside what do we see from our guests, and what kind of signals are we getting to tell us where there might potentially be white space for us as a brand. There’s a lot of opportunity—we could go after a million different things—and there’s stuff that people are always going to be asking for, but as a large brand, you have to be really strategic. You can’t do everything at once, so you have to, kind of, roadmap out what you want to do and choose very carefully what you want to invest in. So, for us, that’s going to mean we’re going to go after big things that we think are going to make the biggest impact, that are going to satisfy our guests and really move the needle for the brand. And that’s really a combination of both taking those culinary insights, those kind of industry reports, and then all of the kind of bespoke work that we’re going to be doing internally, both from the strategy team and then from the insights team ourselves, too. So, one of the things that’s great is, as we’re subscribing to different platforms and different opportunities, we’re able to go and, you know, do searches on ingredients that we are personally seeing in our day-to-day lives, looking at small cafes, small places that might be, you know, not on the national scale yet, but they’re finding interesting flavors, like the ones that you’re seeing in your local—

[00:30:13] Karen: Tumeric honey coffee.

[00:30:15] Jairus: —cafe.

[00:30:16] Karen: [laugh].

[00:30:18] Jairus: Yeah, exactly. Like, so you never know where that inspiration is going to strike. And I think really importantly for us too, is when you’re looking for new ideas, when you’re looking for new flavors, trends, all that kind of stuff, is not just trying to gather that information from the typical places, but we’re also trying to look at it cross-functionally and bringing in folks from across the organization. When I was at Sonic, we got ideas in ideation sessions from interns that turned into product ideas that launched in our national calendar. That’s super exciting because great ideas can come from anywhere. So, it really is a combination of us, you know, people, like, from the culinary side, leaning into their strengths and bringing in all this new ingredients and new flavors that we have no idea what they are, and then on the other side, bringing in the resources that we have access to, and then kind of allowing a place for cross-functional ideation to happen, too.

[00:31:18] Karen: Yeah, yeah. It’s so cool. You know, this is not on our brief so this is one of those moments where I’m like—and I love this space that you operate in, as I have now said, like, way too many times—but it also feels a little bit AI-proof on some level. Maybe not fully AI proof, but the level of human skill, you know, the human intellect and human experience that is kind of baked into your process, are there some areas that you’re like, “Yeah, we’re getting some AI assists there,” or are you really, you know, just leveraging the fact that you are feeding people, and people are in the mix, whether it’s ideating or giving feedback?

[00:31:59] Jairus: Yeah. We’re going to try to take advantage of any tools that are going to help us, right, and AI is going to be part of the insights workflow from now on. Like, it is just going to be there. But I have kind of an unpopular… I don’t know if it’s unpopular, maybe controversial opinion on AI. I don’t think it’s as useful as everyone’s claiming it is [laugh]. I think that’s kind of, to your point, like, we’ve got these aspects of being human that speak to, you know, experiential things, especially. Like, in the space that I’m in, it’s extremely experiential. You experience that food and no algorithm can create that for you. It really is that hard work of combining past experience, current knowledge, and creating something that’s unique and in a certain place at a certain time. AI is a really interesting way to collect a bunch of information. I love using it for super mundane things, but when it comes to actual creation, when it comes to actually building out these ideas, I’m always going to be on the side of leaning on human versus AI. Because as best as I can tell, AI doesn’t really think. It just mimics thoughts and I think, really, there’s no replacement for the human aspect, especially when you’re talking about something as fundamental as feeding people.

[00:33:31] Karen: Yeah, yeah. Facts right there. We’re talking about something that is fundamental to our human life.

[00:33:37] Jairus: Exactly.

[00:33:38] Karen: I just love that, you know, human beings seem to be baked in across your entire pipeline and innovation pipeline, from, you know, from the guests with their guest experience, to the interns in an ideation session, I just, you know, big fan of the kind of work you do. So, now here’s a question—and I am, you know, for the record to all of our listeners, I’m not asking you to share anything proprietary here, so just anything you can though, but are there any kind of macro trends that are kind of influential in your world right now, things that are, like, yeah, I can share this because every, you know, QSR company out there knows this one, or, you know, anything that you could share that could be, you know, just interesting for people to think about, regardless of their category. There might be overlaps. You know, we might have somebody, like, who’s in personal care, who’s like, “Oh, you know what? I never thought about that.” Anything you can share with us that might, you know, bring your world to life a little bit?

[00:34:30] Jairus: Yeah, I think that we’re at a really interesting point where brand relevance is—it feels a little fickle because I think consumers are demanding more brands than ever before. Not only do you need to maybe provide a really good product or a really good service, but you also need to, kind of, entertain and need to be authentic, which is hard for a corporation or, like, a large brand, to do right? And some do it better than others. But I think that, you know, maybe something that can cross different categories or cross different industries, is understanding what your brand actually really stands for—you can’t be everything to everybody—and honing in specifically on that. So, for Panera Bread, what we do really, really well, we do really good food, we do really good especially, like a bunch of, like, comfort food, right? Our soups are killer. You know, you can’t replicate that feeling of getting broccoli cheddar in a bread bowl. Like, it’s just, it’s an experience you can really only get at Panera Bread. Leaning in on that and ensuring that we are being authentic to who we are, and not trying to chase every, you know, shiny object. Because there are going to be a ton of shiny objects out there. It’s going to be a ton of trends. If you can capitalize on them, great, but just know, like, a lot of these little kind of trends that are blips, they don’t really do a lot for building your brand equity. That takes time. It takes time and it takes patience and it takes a lot of focusing on the right things, focusing on who you are and how you can connect authentically with your audience.

[00:36:22] Karen: Yeah, very good, good sound advice for everyone listening. My brain… my brain, again, I happen to have a Panera in our town, and it is comfortable in there, also. Like, I have met girlfriends there, you know, on weekends or let’s go grab a coffee, and we’re sitting very comfortably. And it’s so interesting that you said that because I’m like, oh, the whole experience for us is all about comfort. It’s not just the food, but it’s the vibe in there too, and I never really had that aha before. So, thanks for that. That was fun. I want to ask another question, and this is based on, you know, some of my research into you in advance of this conversation, but talking about younger consumers, as opposed to many of us in the industry who are older or solidly millennial, you know, but now we’ve got, you know, Gen Z, and then there’s even younger, you know, coming up the pike. How do you navigate the kind of culinary wishes for a very different generations in the work that you do? How does thinking about generations influence your work?

[00:37:30] Jairus: It does a lot. I think that’s something that’s ever-present in QSR right now. So, understanding where there are trends for buying habits, right? Who’s actually going out and purchasing a lot of times? And we’re seeing, you know, broadly within the QSR industry that younger Gen Z, like, they really are going out there, purchasing a lot more. They are more attracted to some of these niche brands. Like, they’re the ones that are kind of creating a lot of momentum behind brands like 7 Brew that’s gaining a lot of activity lately. And they’re—

[00:38:06] Karen: One is just going up not three miles from my house. I had to look it up.

[00:38:10] Jairus: Really? [laugh].

[00:38:12] Karen: But that’s fine [laugh]. I’m going—I’m on TikTok right away. My husband and I literally—I’m sorry, sidebar—coming from a Starbucks drivethrough, and I’m like, “Wait, what’s this 7 Brew?” It is within a few blocks of a Starbucks drive-through that we go to all the time, so we’re now going to be passing this. I look it up on TikTok. Anyway, now I know. Continue please.

[00:38:30] Jairus: But there are all these aspects that are driving these new brands. You’re seeing, like, the Cavas of the world, right, where you’re seeing a lot of—some of the demand that you’re seeing from these younger generations like Gen Z is customization. They want more power over what is going into their food, more transparency about what’s going into their food. I think what’s great for a brand like Panera and working and bra—like, we’ve got some food that we feel really, really proud of, right? In any of the food, in our bakery cafes, there are no artificial ingredients in any of the food that we’re making. Like, that is really unheard of in the industry. It’s really fantastic. So, that’s something that, you know, we might have a little bit of a competitive edge, right, when we’re looking compared to other brands. But being able to address some of those aspects without completely changing your business model. Because you can’t—that’s actually going to scream inauthenticity, right? They are looking for authentic brands. They are also looking for that kind of control, they’re also looking for more flavors that are unique and interesting and more bespoke. So, trying to go after the areas where you can get after that, right? So, maybe we can’t address some of those aspects. Maybe we can’t—we can’t be, you know, a 7 Brew. We’re not set up for somebody to, like, drive in and drive out ten seconds later with a super customized coffee like that, right, but what we can do is we can offer some flavors at a scale that maybe one of those brands can’t offer. So, tapping into that understanding what are the things that they’re actually looking for? And I think on the insight side, making sure that whenever we are doing our work, we’re getting a readable sample [laugh] of those groups too, so that we understand, okay, you know, this is what we’re seeing from our Millennials in our cohort. But what is Gen Z saying when they’re when we’re screening new flavors, we’re screening new products? Which ones are they really going after? And making sure, if we can find a Venn diagram of those flavors and those products together that address both those groups, that’s kind of a win-win. So, just taking that stuff into account and then trying to authentically connect with those younger cohorts, that’s super important.

[00:41:01] Karen: Yeah. And knowing who you are, I’m sure, is—

[00:41:03] Jairus: Yeah.

[00:41:04] Karen: At the heart of all of this. Because that Venn diagram will make a lot more sense because you have that stability in who you are. That knowledge of who you are authentically will help you make those decisions that you’re making.

[00:41:14] Jairus: Hopefully.

[00:41:15] Karen: Such good stuff. I really love this. Now, I’m looking at this clock and I’m thinking, I can’t believe, here we are, moving right along, and we’re almost out of time. So, it’s the time for me to ask you, like, of all the things that we had prepped to kind of talk about, what did you wish I had asked that I hadn’t gotten to?

[00:41:28] Jairus: I think one thing that I was asked on an interview before was just kind of advice for other insights professionals. My advice is to connect with insights professionals, in your own industry, but then across industries as well. Going to conferences when you can, getting inspiration. So, I have a good friend that is in insights in the theme park industry. And the stuff, though, that crosses over from that to QSR is fascinating because humans are humans, wherever they’re interacting, right? So, getting that inspiration, creating those kinds of connections, that’s super key. And I think that’s probably, like, my best advice is just making sure that you’re constantly getting inspired that way, and then, you know, networking, but like, in an authentic way with other insights folks and those who are maybe just, like, kind of on the adjacencies of the insights industry, to give you more transparency into how the rest of their industries work, too.

[00:42:39] Karen: Yeah, yeah. I love the idea again, thinking in that innovation space, and the playfulness of innovation of, you know, borrowing from those other industries, so learning from somebody in the theme park space, of course, not just necessarily in the food, but in the whole event experience, or the whole theme park experience, you know, because it’s so critical to the work you do. I love that and I think, you know, taking those excursions to some other worlds through people that you know in insights, I think that’s such great advice. Really, really helpful. So, my last question would be, also, in the world of advice, but more, kind of, do you have a business philosophy or something that you adhere to, something that guides you, or you know, is sort of like, this is a lesson that I learned that I take with me and will continue to take with me moving forward?

[00:43:26] Jairus: Yeah, I think if I had to, like, put it in a small phrase, ‘maybe flexibility with rigor.’ So, flexibility in that you’re able to pivot when you need to because you’re going to need to pivot in the insights world. It’s just going to happen. People aren’t going to show up for the focus group that you planned. You know, business objectives are going to change. You know, the situations are going to change. So, being able to be flexible, but at the same time, making sure that the work you’re done is done with a level of rigor that you can point back to the results and you can say with confidence, this is the route that we should be going down. I think if you are, you know, crossing your t’s, dotting your I’s, people are going to be able to look back on the work that you did and really use that to inform the decisions that they’re making. You know that’s going to be invaluable. And you’ll be known in whatever organization you’re in for that work that you’re doing, right? So, they’ll look to you as a subject matter expert, but then also as somebody who can come with guidance for how to make decisions about the business.

[00:44:35] Karen: Yeah. That’s awesome. Thank you so much for this conversation. By the way, in my brain, I’m already, like, oh, I want to introduce you to so and so, and I want to introduce you—I want to help you grow your network right now with some of the food—not just the people in insights and food service, but some of the really people doing great, innovative work at other organizations too, that have spoken at some of our events. I’m like, I just want to, you know, help you network just from this podcast episode alone.

[00:45:01] Jairus: Well, that—

[00:45:02] Karen: I can’t say enough in terms of gratitude. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:45:06] Jairus: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:45:08] Karen: It was just an absolute pleasure. I loved the conversation. And to our editor at Big Bad Audio, thank you so much for doing everything that you do. As we wrap this up, I hope this episode isn’t too heavy of a lift for you, Jamie, but always great to have you in our corner. To Brigette for producing. Thank you so much. And to our listeners, we’re so grateful that you show up time and time again to enjoy these conversations. We hope it was meaningful to you. It certainly was meaningful to me. Have a great day, everyone, that’s it from the Greenbook Podcast.