Panera Bread to Hit $2 Billion in Digital Sales by End of Year

According to Panera’s CEO Blaine Hurst who spoke at CNBC’s Productivity@Work event on Tuesday, the company is set to hit $2 billion in sales by the end of 2018.

Digital sales such as mobile and kiosk orders and online orders, make up roughly 33% of the company’s sales.

“We did not expect to be here until 2020,” Hurst said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Tuesday before his appearance at the Productivity@Work event. “So we’re nearly two full years ahead of target in terms of our digital growth.”

Hurst had forecast that digital sales would be one-third of all sales within the next five years and the company hit that mark this year.

Today delivery is also 75% when it was only in 15 percent of Panera’s restaurants a year ago. “Consumers want what they want, when they want it, where they want it and how they want it,” Hurst remarked.

The soup and sandwich restaurant chain was sold last year to JAB Holdings for $7.5 billion.