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Panera Bread has been using antibiotic-free meat for a decade, but unlike rival Chipotle, it's struggled to effectively communicate its green credentials to consumers. writes Andrew Marder. The company is introducing a communications strategy touting its produce, donations and community cafes for low-income families. "[T]here's a lot of value in the work that Panera is doing, and it just takes a few good ad campaigns to bring that value to bear on the bottom line," Marder writes.

Panera Bread will transition to 100% cage-free eggs over the next five years, the company said Thursday. Panera will also stop sourcing pork from pigs raised with gestation crates and roasted turkey from birds raised with antibiotics, and boost the amount of beef that comes from grass-fed, free-range sources by the end of this year

, it is making a bold pledge to remove all artificial additives - including coloring and preservatives - from its café menus by the end of 2016.

Chick-fil-A announced this week that it will stop using meat from chickens raised with antibiotics within five years. The chain said consumer demands sparked the change; Chipotle and Panera Bread have taken similar measures recently. "This ... surfaced as the No. 1 issue for our customers," said Tim Tassopoulos, Chick-fil-A's executive vice president of operations.

Panera Bread and Chipotle led the fast-food pack by earning A's on the new annual report card from a coalition of public interest groups that annually ranks corporate efforts to remove antibiotics from their poultry, beef and pork supplies. Twelve of the other 25 listed companies also made progress eliminating the drugs, but the report says they need to catch up with the A-listers and pay as much attention to beef and pork as to poultry.