Echo and Format a date from mySQL DB

Hey all, I'm attempting to pull some date values from my database, and format them as they're displayed. My database has a field "deadline" of datatype "DATE", which has a value that's for example, "2017-01-13", or Y-M-D format. I try to echo out my data with:

{{$meeting->deadline->format('m-d-Y')}}

and I get the error: "Call to a member function format() on string"

Anyone know the correct way to format this? My model looks like:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Meeting extends Model
{
  protected $table = 'apac_meetings';

  protected $dates = ['deadline', 'meeting_date'];

  protected $fillable = ['deadline' , 'meeting_date', 'meeting_start', 'meeting_end', 'meeting_location'];
}

My route:

Route::resource('/meetings', 'MeetingsController');

and my Controller:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use DB;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use \App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use \App\Meeting;

class MeetingsController extends Controller
{

  public function index(){
    $meetings = DB::table('apac_meetings')->get();
    return view('meetings', ['meetings' => $meetings]);
  }

  public function update(Request $request, Meeting $meeting)
  {
    //Validate
    $request->validate([
        'deadline' => 'required',
        'meeting_date' => 'required',
        'meeting_start' => 'required',
        'meeting_end' => 'required',
        'meeting_location' => 'required',
    ]);

    $meeting->deadline = $request->deadline;
    $meeting->meeting_date = $request->meeting_date;
    $meeting->meeting_start = $request->meeting_start;
    $meeting->meeting_end = $request->meeting_end;
    $meeting->meeting_location = $request->meeting_location;

    $meeting->save();
    $request->session()->flash('message', 'Successfully modified the task!');
    return redirect('meetings');
  }
}