Au Bon Pain management buys out Compass Group

Au Bon Pain, Boston, ramps up its strategy to compete with bakery café giant Panera Bread Co. with a recent buyout by its corporate management and a continued shift to the suburbs rather than downtown locations.

The management of Au Bon Pain completed the buyout of the third-largest bakery café chain in August. Its former parent, London-based Compass Group PLC, still retains a 25 percent stake in the brand.

Au Bon Pain management called the buyout a "mutual decision" and added that the Compass Group reinvested in the brand by remodeling all of the stores. The move allows Compass to return to its core focus, which is primarily on corporate and institutional contract-management accounts.

Au Bon Pain seeks to grow through more franchising and company-owned units. The bakery café chain introduced its new suburban prototype last year in Woburn, Mass., has opened new units in Pembroke, Mass. and Bloominton, Minn., and is scheduled to open another unit soon in Edison, N.J. Au Bon Pain currently has 188 company-owned and franchised locations in the Unites States and $245 million in annual sales last year.

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