Director, Real Estate Strategy

This range is provided by Panera Bread. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

$/yr - $/yr

Job Purpose

The position’s primary goal is the development, enhancement and advancement of a strategic market plan, sales and cannibalization forecasting models, identifying and tracking success metrics and through a team of strategists to educate and gain alignment with cross‑functional partners and franchisees. This role leads a team of strategists developing strategic market plans through market research, spatial analytics and competitive insights supporting field cross‑functional teams in optimizing retail cafe development through a portfolio of asset types.

The position will build strategic plans for both existing and new markets to facilitate franchise and company growth, while educating others and executing on aligned actions. The Director of Real Estate Strategy enables education educates leadership and field teams through market diagnostics, spatial analytics, competitive analysis, post‑opening audits and support diligence on proposed development agreements, franchising sales, market points, sites and their impact/influence on the overall market plan.

They will act as an UNBIASED strategic coach for not only a team of strategists, but the Real Estate and Franchise teams while supporting cross functional goals and objectives by enabling and influencing the quality of decision making with respect to growth and performance in markets in both new store development and asset optimization.

Location:

Field‑based/Remote

Duties & Responsibilities

• Strategic Market Plan development, maintenance, continued innovation and enhancements:

• Leading as well as developing and coaching a team of strategists in market and brand research to develop and maintain strategic market plans for brand growth through both prioritized new store development (when and where) and optimization of an existing portfolio of franchise and company assets.

• Managing and innovating the socialization of the Strategic Market Plan to prioritize and drive disciplined execution by the Real Estate Team and Franchisees.

• Franchise Inventory:
Lead the development, maintenance and summarization of Franchise Sales Inventory to enable/compliment strategic market growth. Lead and coach the cross‑functional tactical clustering of franchise inventory and alignment for sale by the Franchise Sales Team for both existing and new franchise candidates.

• Trade Area and Site Analytics:
Leading as well as developing, innovating and coaching a team of strategists in utilizing spatial (GIS) tools, demographics, competitive/business generator data/points of interest and mass mobile data, conduct analyses to identify success metrics for both trade area and site characteristics, as well as knowledge of comparable store characteristics and performance to deliver scenario‑based sales and cannibalization forecasts utilizing forecasting tools/models, analog history and/or customer intercept surveys.

• Restaurant Performance Assessments:

• Leading as well as developing, innovating and coaching a team of strategists in assessing performance of existing assets including, but not limited to sales impact from proximate openings, asset optimization/brand strategies such as relocations, remodels and other changes, competitive landscape changes (openings and closings).

• Collaborate with cross‑functional partners to develop and prioritize actions based on market conditions and actions.

• Cross‑Functional Collaborations:

• Lead as well as coach a team of strategists to collaborate, educate, and enable knowledge‑based decision making by cross‑functional partners based on the assessments and conclusions of the actions described above.

• Provide on‑going education to Real Estate, Franchise Sales, Operations, and others by providing recommendations, course corrections, scoping, and removing obstacles to optimize growth nationally, within markets and in micro scenarios as needed.

• Proactively work to satisfy needs and support for teams throughout the organization via ad‑hoc mapping, geospatial analysis and data…