YouSaid · the spoken record

Niren Chaudhary

lines on the record: 34
first: 2020-04-30
most recent: 2020-04-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Build windmills and don't look for bunkers. When things are very tough, organizations can get so busy diving into bunkers and to play defense, you might forget that building windmills, which is creating opportunities, looking for opportunities to do the right big things for your associates, for your customers, for your community, for your brand, I think can be incredibly inspiring and elevating.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fight the good fight. You know, there's a lot of energy from saying, I'm not just going to roll over and die. I'm going to actually be resilient. I'm going to be tenacious. I'm going to give it everything and more. I have to give you an example. We have recently launched a program called Fight for Your Family, where all of our associates in our cafes, we've told them the best thing you can do for our fellowed employees, for our company is to drive sales. So let's fight for our family. So I think that's the third one, which is fight the good fight. The last one, I think, is probably my favorite one, which is”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First one is that really empowers a leader is to take personal accountability and ownership to be focused on what you have control over I think the minute you lose your center, I think if you remind yourself, okay, let me just focus on what I have control over. I find that terribly liberating. The second thing I find that gives me certainly inspiration is to lead with your heart. Think to ensure that you can do hard things, but you must do that with compassion and with empathy. The third one is”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel very accountable and very responsible. I feel that at times like this, leaders must firstly stay calm so that they can focus on what truly matters, even whilst important to deal with the challenges, ensure that we are building hope and optimism and inspiration in the organization at times like this. And this mindset of we have to lead the way, we have to be part of the solution. I think a brand like Panera allows me on behalf of the company to do just that. And I'm really grateful for that. So I would say, am I stressed, positive stress? So it's channeled into, okay, so what can I do? What can we do to do the right things the right way at this important time?”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think we are in the process right now as we start thinking of reopening. And we are exploring things like this medical station where when employees come in, we want to make sure that we have a process and a protocol of documenting the temperature that they're actually in good health and therefore they can actually work on that particular day, along with a host of other measures like masks and everything else. So we're in the process of defining that. I really believe this is the number one most important thing that we need to be doing to reassure our associates and our customers. Therefore, we are thinking through every single aspect of how we can make that far more effective than it was before.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Families with delivery, with catering offers, I think we can actually grow the business. And finally, looking at white space opportunities like grocery. And that's why I think it's so important that we've dipped our toe in it right now. We can learn from it, see how it performs, and maybe that leads into new business opportunities like meal kits or some other ideas in the future. So those are the three ways in which we're thinking about the future. Safety, leverage our strengths, and then look for new growth opportunities.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Number two, they are going to want value. Number three, they're going to be looking for convenience. And lastly, I think there's going to be a much bigger requirement and expectation on wellness. I think Panera is uniquely positioned to leverage its position in the new world. And I think that Panera's unique strengths are three. The brand stands for wellness and personalized wellness because of our e-commerce platform, the delivery infrastructure, the e-com infrastructure. So in the post-COVID-19 period, Panera will be uniquely positioned to leverage our strengths, accelerate our opportunities, and then look for new opportunities for growth. And let me give you a little bit of feel of what I mean. We are not that strong with families. And therefore, I think if you go after...”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think this health crisis is going to move into a financial crisis, which is going to deepen. And there's going to be also a humanitarian crisis alongside. I think within that context, the competitive intensity will consolidate because unfortunately many brands may not be able to make it through. However, at the same time, there'll be new entrants for alternatives for at-home consumption meals like grocery stores and meal kits will be new competitors suddenly for us when they were not there first time around. I think real estate will soften possibly and we'll have opportunities there to leverage some of the benefits from that. Another opportunity would be access to talent. I think we'll be able to access lots of very, very good high quality talent at this time. And then finally, if I look at consumers, I think there are four important consumer insights that we have to be mindful for. Number one, the customers want safe.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our mindset is always about let's focus on what we have control over. Our world and let's make that the best that we can possibly make it for the sake of our customers, associates. And I think other companies that are doing well, I think that's great. It's great for the economy. It's great for those companies. It's great for the customers. It's great for their employees. I'm actually very glad that there are companies who are benefiting from this. Otherwise, what we're going to walk into could have been even worse. I think that the financial crisis is going to deepen. And if it was not for companies, some of them who are bucking the trend, it could probably have been even worse. So I'm grateful that some companies are doing well. Like I said, CVS and Walmart, a huge thank you to them to absorb our associates temporarily. If they were not doing well, we won't be able to do that. Our whole sort of obsession is, okay, let's take accountability and ownership over that we have control over and let's not worry about what's happening to us. And that, I think, is very empowering.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would say it is more about leveraging the infrastructure that we have and keep improving it. We've been investing behind information technology platforms for the last five or six years and significant amount of dollars close to half a billion dollars of investment. And we have a large, dedicated capability and IT infrastructure. So it's a huge point of competitive advantage to have the e-commerce infrastructure that we do.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Massively important. If we did not have the off premise infrastructure of delivery, both our own and our third party aggregator partnerships, if we didn't have that, or if we did not have the e-commerce platform to unlock this, it would be very, very difficult to be able to move at this speed and do something so ambitious. So I think those two things were certainly big enablers. And the third, I think, enabler was just our quality of the pantry that we have. We have more than 250 ingredients. That's not normal in many food concepts. And these ingredients are all clean. They're free of all artificial preservative, sweetness, and so on. So it's very high quality bakery products, high quality dairy products, high quality fresh produce. And therefore, we had this combination of three things. Great ingredients, delivery infrastructure.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The objective and the importance of this. And I think that's why I just forged a huge amount of collaboration and a mindset of we're going to do this and we're going to problem solve and we're going to make it happen. Our lives are at stake here. The lives of our associates are at stake here. If we don't get the business moving, don't get the momentum, who knows how deep this hole could be. So I think that just brings the team together like nothing else does.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, I think what was fascinating to watch here was since everybody understood the context and the problem that we were trying to solve, Sort of in the normal rhythm of the organization, there are a lot of barriers conversation. Can't do this, can't do that, or have you thought of this? Have you thought of that? All of that almost disappeared because everyone was clear about the mission.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can potentially get incremental revenue, keep our cafes open longer, keep our associates employed longer, and perhaps even generate incremental profit. And who knows how this new world shakes out, it might be the beginnings of maybe a new type of business. Maybe this evolves to meal kits in the future. One of our team members whose very talented terms of setting these channels up, he said, I don't think it's a crazy idea. Let me just huddle with the team and see what we can do. The level of collaboration and tenacity with the team and to go after this urgently was just phenomenal. So in 14 days, from the time it came up as an idea, we launched it as a whole new business platform and it went live. And I could not be more proud of the speed at which the team moved.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“E commerce. So, if you have e commerce and if you have a delivery infrastructure and you have high quality ingredients, we said, what if we took care of this problem that the customers are seeing in terms of this high friction on those items, if we can solve a customer problem, it's a win.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a terrific story. So, picture that the entire leadership team is basically sweating bullets trying to figure out how are we going to manage this thing. And we're watching what's going on. And at the same time, we are now, all of us with our wives and spouses sheltering in. None of us want to go out. When we do go out, we realize that there is not what we want in terms of high demand gross sea items. So we knew that this is a major, major friction. All of us, you know, we were talking about it. Hey, by the way, have you been able to order grocery? And he says, no, don't ask me about grocery. I don't want to go out and I can't get it delivered. What do I do? And then we just said, you know, is it a crazy idea? We have such high quality ingredients. Everyone said yes. He said we have a network of delivery drivers. We have our own delivery infrastructure. And we have such a strong e-commerce infrastructure. Almost one third of our revenue comes from”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe it's the latter, which is not getting to the right places and to the right people fast enough, which is why brands like us have to make it happen. We have a secure supply chain. We are okay. We have wholesome, freshly prepared meals. You have food banks that don't have food. We have to ensure that we help them and provide this food so they can take care of families who are impacted as they shelter in.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food insecurity is becoming a massive problem that can potentially impact 54 million people, Americans in the next four to five weeks. So therefore we must do something. So we are about to launch a movement, I won't even call it a program. It's a movement that we're launching tomorrow. It's called Together Without Hunger. We want to bring the nation together to help solve this problem of hunger by actually giving 500,000 meals to food banks so that they can serve families impacted by the pandemic. So we have a partnership with Feeding America that we have just created and we have pledged to serve half a million meals to families and children impacted by the pandemic. So those are some examples of what we are doing to be part of the solution.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Second is children. And you talked about that. Our partnership with USDA recognized by the White House, where we've pledged to serve freshly prepared, wholesome meals to children beginning in the state of Ohio and beyond. I'm excited to share with you that we are launching a third initiative, which is to do with families. Families that are impacted by the pandemic. Now you may have seen that almost 20 to 25% of food banks may run out of food in the next four weeks. They don't have food.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Serve my customers at this moment. What is most important to them? Safety and convenience. So therefore, contactless delivery. Therefore, sealed packaging. Therefore, we launched 1000 curbside pickup drive-ups in seven days flat in all the cafes in which we don't have a drive-through. And then also the grocery that you talked about, recognizing the friction of not being able to access high demand grocery items. We set up a new line of business in just two weeks. Same mindset on community, which is at Panera, we believe we must serve our communities at times like this, especially those who are most impacted by the pandemic. There are three groups of people that are most impacted. First is doctors and nurses. So we are actually serving 50,000 meals a week to doctors and nurses in New York.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started with a health crisis that's moving to becoming a financial crisis and a humanitarian crisis. And if you step back from it and try and reflect on the emotions that you and I and everybody is facing at this time in the country, there are two types of emotion. On the one hand, we are feeling uncertain, stress, anxiety, fear. On the other hand, we've never felt more connected to our families, never had more compassion for our communities, and never felt more responsible for the world and environment in which we live. And for us, I think it's exactly the same way. And we believe as Panera, given the values I shared with you, we have to at moments like this stand up and make a difference. You know, so associates we talked about, compassion and care, on customers, similarly, it is this mindset of how can I...”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's a very important question. And let me just give you the context of who Panera is and what we believe in. So our purpose is to make this world healthier and happier. Why we come to work every single day. And our mission is very simple ensure that good eating and good food is accessible to everyone. Let me share with you how I see what's going on right now.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apart from the stores that are open, follow their regular protocols around sanitation and safety. I was talking about the deep cleaning happening in the stores that got impacted by associates who tested positive.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think of it as a cafe shutdown totally, and then you're moving all your equipment and furniture around to one side, and you have basically a high pressure water jets, and you have appropriate chemicals that you need to use to ensure your really deep cleaning it, which is kind of literally sort of assuming that this place has some level of infection and it has to be cleaned out. And everything that needs to be done to ensure that that indeed is the case.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think it was Walmart I wrote to the CEO's office and I said, you know, this is our need. I know that you're looking for associates. We have great associates. Can we do it? And then it really went fast. In CVS, similarly, we had key relationship with senior leaders, which we activated, and then it moved very, very quickly. In fact, CVS constructed a homepage only for Panera employees to apply for the roles. So I think it moves with speed if you really reach out to the leaders of the respective organizations who share the same kind of passion and compassion for people as we do.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And brand, but we can do it with heart truly caring for our associates and treating them like very much as part of the family that they are.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, a very important one, which is we have made an arrangement with brands like CBS and Walmart who are actually hiring at the moment. So we went to them and we said, can we have an arrangement whereby our associates who've been followed can access your temporary jobs without friction and then we can get them back when the time is right. So we have made that arrangement with CVS and Walmart to make it easier for our associates to find jobs. Followed associates, for example, in the support center. We are paying them 25% of the salary. We think it's the right thing to do. And finally, we're also thinking about the mental health of our associates. And we recently launched a wellness program that all our employees can access a 21-day meditation program, including followed employees. So I think we have to do the right thing to protect the business.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, we have not received anything from the government as corporate. Our franchise partners who run smaller businesses, they obviously have and they need to to be able to survive. And that indeed is the intent of the program. We have this emergency relief fund called Friends in Need that we're giving out, including, by the way, to our followed associates. They're also eligible for it. Second one is we've decided to provide free family meals to all our associates once a week, including our furloughed associates. And third one,”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People decisions, I have to say. Continue to be the hardest ones for me, and there is nothing more that we would want than to see our business come back, our revenues come back, so we can bring many of these followed employees quickly back into our cafes.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the decisions that are always the most difficult are the ones that are to do with our associates and our teams. We believe that we are in the people business that happens to sell soups, salads, and sandwiches. And our people are at the very heart of who we are. When the business declined so dramatically, we knew to protect our business, we had to conserve cash. We just had to survive. And to be able to protect cash, it meant, of course, doing the straightforward stuff like, you know, canceling all non-essential expenditure. I think that is straightforward. But we knew we had to flex our variable costs in our cafes, either reduced hours or indeed we had to furlough our associates in the field. And that is very, very hard. You know, as you flex that model down, because you know people who can afford it the least end up getting impacted the most.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We said is to ensure the safety of our associates and customers. That's truly paramount and most important. Secondly is the importance of protecting our brand and business. And we recognized early on that both were important, we had to do both. And we knew as we do both, we'll have to make some very tough decisions. And we'll have to have one the courage to do that quickly. And secondly, as a team, we said whatever we do. We must do through the filter of our values. And our values are around treating our people fairly with respect, with compassion, with care, with the utmost amount of transparency and candor.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, I think just before the virus hit us, we thought we had a very compelling strategy that we were in the process of implementing and feeling pretty good about the year. And then suddenly COVID-19 hit us. And I think with the containment, the social distancing and the closure of our on-premise dine-in areas, we have seen a major disruption on our business within a just a week we saw a huge drop in our sales. And in that very first week, we realized that this is big. At that time, we were obviously caught by surprise, just like everybody else, at how quickly and exponentially this virus is spreading. So early in as a team, we stepped back very quickly and said, what's truly important? And we came up with two important priorities.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We set up a new line of business in just two weeks, and we have pledged to serve half a million meals to families and children impacted by the pandemic.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before the virus hit us, we thought we had a very compelling strategy that we were in the process of implementing and feeling pretty good about the year. And then suddenly COVID-19 hit us. Within a week, we saw a huge drop in our sales. And in that very first week, we realized that this is big. So early in, as a team, we stepped back very quickly and said What's truly important? We've decided to provide free family meals to all our associates once a week, including our followed associates. We have made an arrangement with brands like CVS and Walmart who are actually hiring at the moment. We launched 1,000 curbside pickup drive-ups in seven days flat in all the cafes in which we don't have a drive-through.”
2020-04-30 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT