Why is Panera selling coffee subscriptions for $9 a month?

This short article in Fast Company (February 27, 2020) describes a new business model being used by Panera, “Panera debuts $9/month unlimited coffee and tea subscription.” While short, the article offers an interesting example that can be applied across many topics:

• Customer lifetime value and customer equity (Chapter 2) — Panera found that subscription customers visited the stores 3 times as often and purchased 70% more add-on items.
• Subscription pricing model (Chapter 17) — Our new edition of Essentials of Marketing delves a bit more deeply into subscription pricing as many products now utilize the business model.
• Marketing research (Chapter 7) — the article describes some of the findings from a test market Panera used before launching the new subscription pricing model.