/ck/ - Food & Cooking

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/business/dealbook/panera-bread-jab-.html
>JAB Holding Company has acquired the American brands Peet’s Coffee, Caribou Coffee and Keurig Green Mountain, all since 2012. It also combined the European coffee giant D.E. Master Blenders 1753 with the coffee business of Mondelez to create a company now known as Jacobs Douwe Egbert.

>Now JAB needs somewhere to sell all that coffee. On Wednesday, JAB, which is privately held, said it would add the Panera restaurant chain to its growing empire of American coffee and food favorites for $7.5 billion, including debt.

>In 2014, JAB bought the bagel chain Einstein Brothers, which it has been combining with Caribou is some markets. And last year, it paid $1.35 billion for Krispy Kreme, the struggling doughnut chain. With the acquisition of Panera, JAB will have spent more than $40 billion in what appears to be a big bet that it can muscle in on a market dominated by Starbucks and Nestlé.

>The restaurant business in general has been in the doldrums for the last couple of years, with most big chains struggling to eke out increases in same-store sales of even 1 or 2 percent. The NPD Group, a research and consulting firm, predicts that traffic in restaurants in the United States will remain stalled this year as well. The firm predicts that quick-service restaurant chains like McDonald’s and KFC, which account for 80 percent of the total traffic in the restaurant industry, will see a 1 percent increase in visits this year.

The consolidation of the restaurant industry continues..
How much longer can Chipotle hold out?