Dive Brief:

• Panera is adding an annual membership option to its Unlimited Sip Club subscription service and is expanding benefits to include a $0 delivery fee on digital orders, the company announced Wednesday.
• The service, initially available for $10.99 a month, has helped Panera boost transaction growth, the company said.
• The new annual option offers a roughly 17% discount at its $119.99 price point compared to the yearly cost of a $11.99 monthly subscription, which totals $143.88.

Dive Insight:

Panera said members of the Unlimited Sip Club account for about 25% of the chain’s transactions, the company wrote in an email. The offering is also driving enrollment in the brand’s loyalty program, which has about 48 million members.

Panera’s loyalty program and subscription club have been important tools for the brand as it faces persistent inflation and broader, industrywide challenges. Last year, Panera expanded its coffee subscription program to include all self-serve drinks when it created the Unlimited Sip Club. In September, the chain updated its loyalty program to offer more customer choice. While still based on a combination of frequency, spend and personalized data, the change brought Panera’s program more in line with industry trends, which have favored points-based programs with wide customer choice in recent years.

The new $0 delivery fee on digital orders only applies to orders placed through the company’s channels, rather than third-party providers, according to the press release. In-store, curbside, drive-thru, kiosk, Rapid Pick-Up and catering orders are also excluded. This may be intended to capture more customer data than would be available from aggregators.