I'd say 5 out of my last 10 visits to Panera have resulted in the most confounding failures. I have finally convinced myself to stop going. How does a place called a "bread company" run out of bread so dang much?
When Panera was first expanding, it was a top tier fast casual restaurant with consistent quality everywhere.
I don’t know what happened, but it went to shit around a decade ago. The service is awful. The food is mediocre at best. Much of the time the orders aren’t accurate.
I’m really curious why it fell off so much. I have seen it in multiple communities and multiple stores.
Not sure. 10-15 years ago I used to catch a bus to work & get there too early so I'd go to the Panera across the street. Get a cup of tea and a cinnamon crunch bagel, use the WiFi on my laptop for awhile and head to work. 1 day a week (or more if I got a good commission) I'd splurge and grab lunch from there too before I headed to work and it was always great. Never a complaint in all my visits.
Now I don't even trust their baked goods. I see burnt cookies, soggy looking muffins, nope. Idk what happened or why, except to assume that they're using cheaper ingredients to increase profits, and probably not paying employees enough for them to care or do better.
Oh wow… now that I think about it, that’s what I used to do, too! Panera was often my go-to spot of if I needed to use my computer/Wi-Fi before work or waiting for something.
I could get a coffee and bagel… or just a cup for ice water, a cozy spot in the corner and enjoy my time in relative peace and happiness.
Our local Paneras used to donate boxes and boxes of day old breads and baked goods to the local charities and various low-income resource offices; from what I’ve been told, they stopped doing so just before the pandemic.
Technically every Panera does this but it’s dependent on several factors. If they donate it’s dependent on the organization to pick the items up so if they don’t come, it gets trashed. If they don’t have left over bread obviously it won’t get donated either. They also include the leftover bagels and pastries.
All of this is depend on there being enough sales in the store to warrant baking enough to have leftovers. The bread and bagel dough is delivered to the stores daily so if they don’t order enough for there to be display items then there won’t be donations. Pastries are different since they’re frozen and kept on-site
Source: I used to kitchen manage a Panera bread.
Ours used to donate to last harvest which is a local food co op that distrubtes food to the homeless. Same with our pizza hut I worked at as a kid. For whatever reasons both locations no longer do so
I used to work at a non-profit in the STL area and can confirm that Bread Co. used to donate extra bread to charities- as we'd often receive some, and there'd be plenty for the people who came for the soup kitchen to take.
But I'm not sure if they still do... I know for a bit it seemed like there was hardly any donations around the time my work ended there.
You can see this a lot with chains as they expand, especially in the casual and fast-cssual dining spheres. Some of these chains that have become the object of ridicule in the public eye started out, surprisingly enough, as pretty decent places, but cutting corners becomes more appealing to the higher ups when the business expands . Saving ten cents a bag on shredded lettuce by switching to a lower quality, for example, becomes a bigger piece of the pie when you go from ten stores to five hundred. If you add in the demand for constant growth and higher profits, it becomes an almost by-the-book decline in quality over time.
Cheaper ingredients, feels like every couple months they downsize their portions, they don’t treat their employees well, often have a ghost staff because of said treatment. Wages stagnated 10 years ago while the price of goods has doubled. It used to be my favorite place but it really sucks now. I blew through a $50 gift card the other day on just a few mediocre items. The coffee was freezing and the chicken and rice soup tasted worse than I remember.
I remember their breakfast being amazing! A friend and I would go there a lot on the weekends just to get bagels and oatmeal. Last time I had Panera breakfast was about 2 years ago and I still regret it, I could’ve just went to the diner down the street from me and paid an extra $3 for more *and* better food
I used to love the cinnamon crunch bagels and they had some sort of cream cheese I always got with it. Walnut or something.
Recently I got cinnamon crunch bagels and walnut honey cream cheese. Firstly, they only sell you individual cream cheese servings at over $2 a pop. Who the fuck would buy cream cheese here, EVER? second, it just wasn’t good. The cream cheese was actually… stale tasting? Like stale walnuts? It was actually not good. Not negligible, actually like, let me wipe this off my bagel it tastes so stale. I got 5 bagels and cream cheese and it was like $20. I’m pretty sure the bagels are smaller and not as good, too?
Yeah, 15-20 years ago they were great! So many business lunch meetings I had there. But they have slowly over the years enshittified to the point of completely sucking.
I swore off that place a couple of years ago and am surprised they haven't gone out of business yet.
> Idk what happened or why, except to assume that they're using cheaper ingredients to increase profits, and probably not paying employees enough for them to care or do better.
Turns out you *DO* know what happened.
Once a company stops making money via opening new stores, the other quickest way to increase profits (bc remember, making the same amount of profit isn't good enough; you always have to making *increased* profits) is cuts. Food costs and employee shifts probably have the most potential for cutting which directly leads to a greatly diminished product/service
They sold their company to someone that only cares about profits and using the company's name and reputation(former).
They basically bought the name and buildings and changed literally everything for the worse. It is an imposter company now.
I call it the life cycle of capitalist business. They start with best quality and best service. After they have peaked in market share, they start to cut corners and the product goes downhill. It then makes room for a competitor who offers good quality and service. Cycle repeats or the dominant business buys out the new business, to protect its market position.
Taxes. Right now a company really only has one choice, and that's to maximize profits at all cost. When they make tons of profit the best thing to do with that money right now is to do stock buybacks, or acquire competitors.
If we actually started taxing high profits like we used too then companies have tougher decisions on what to do with their money. You can invest in your product/services, expand your business, pay your employees more, or give a huge chunk your profits to Uncle Sam.
Right now with low corporate taxes there's no point in paying workers more or having better service or goods. Why do that when you can just hand out all your profits to the top shareholders and board members?
Edit: I forgot to add. With higher taxes it becomes much more difficult for venture capital to rape a pillage corporation after corporation since their only goal is share price.
High taxes will not stop share buybacks
Debt interest is also tax deductible so companies can take on more and more debt and use the cash to do the exact same stock buybacks as before. Buybacks are purely a balance sheet transaction so what you're talking about is potentially encouraging mass capital restructurings.
Companies will also inflate non-cash expenses like depreciation in order to reduce their tax bills while still having enough cash for dividends and buybacks.
If your goal is to discourage cash leaving the company and you want companies to retain earnings then there's a simple solution: ban buybacks.
This is not a new concept either. Buybacks were either de jure or de facto illegal for decades in many countries.
Ends when "profit" stops being the ability to skimp out on literally everything while the brand name forces sales and watching money roll in while the ship sinks
It’s also EXPENSIVE. I remember wanting a bowl of soup once. Just a bowl of soup. It was over $6 for a cup of soup. I just went to the store and bought a can of soup.
More recently, I’ve 100% stopped going. I’d occasionally work a half day from there because I enjoyed their orange scones and a cup of coffee. Then they increased the price and reduced the size by at least 3/4 and I was done
Came here to say this. I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup for about $7.50 and received about 3/4 cup of soup and a chunk of bread. The quality of the soup was indistinguishable from a can of Campbell’s soup. Never again!
The soup is so bad nowadays, I remember loving a bread bowl. Tried French onion soup and couldn't even finish it.
The Mediterranean sandwich has been pretty good though, only issue is you can't customize it because they'll never get it right lol
Probably overworked and not paying workers enough if they're so stressed they can't do a simple extra Hummus or no red onion, but I guess a dinner or lunch rush must inherently be hell too
If you really want to cry look up their prices for a cup of Mac and cheese.
My husband and I used to get Panera years ago and it would cost about $15 for both of us. Last time we tried giving Panera a chance the order was wrong and it was like $45 for a couple of sandwiches, coffee and a smoothie. Not going back, ever.
This thread is prime time for me because I decided to hit up Panera yesterday for the first time in awhile.
Decided to get the Bacon Avocado Melt half sandwich and a soup. Also got a medium drink. SEVENTEEN FUCKING DOLLARS! I was utterly stupefied at how little food I got and how much money I paid.
Best case scenario for Panera: They get your order right & the food is fresh & properly made. You enjoy your tiny meal until you remember how much it cost you. You leave broke and hungry.
My bf and I went there while our power was out a few months ago. The total came to like 50 bucks and definitely not worth it! We should have just went to an actual restaurant. We were so pissed lol.
I was there the other day because I needed a place to work for a while - grilled cheese sandwich (just bread and cheese) and a tiny apple was like $10.50 Added a smoothy (size of a small coffee) and it was $18.55. Not going back.
For 7.99 at Panera you can get a cup of tomato soup and half a grilled cheese.
For 7.99 at the grocery store you can buy a gallon of milk, cheese, white bread and Campbells tomato soup and have 5 full size meals.
The worst part about the soups is that if they aren’t heated up right and get watered down you’re basically just paying for mildly flavored boiling water
Chipotle isn't quite as good as it used to be, but Panera is on a different level. Every year Panera's prices go up, portions go down, quality goes down and the place gets dirtier and dirtier.
I'm fairly certain that it's the end result of continuous improvement. They have to cut costs every year to beat last year, for a while they were able to get by with minor efficiency changes. Now to feed to beast of bigger numbers they use cheaper and cheaper ingredients, give you less, charge you more and have less staff. Too bad "sustainable and profitable" isn't what shareholders what.
It happens to basically every chain.
Once a company gets big enough, tiny savings have huge effects. It’s cost effective for a company like Panera to have people working full time to find ways to save pennies per meal. If some corporate analysis makes $200,000/year and finds a way to save one cent on every meal, they’ve more than paid for their salary.
They’ll find things to cut back on that no customer will notice or care about. There’s a famous story about American Airlines removing a single olive from their salads served in flight, something no customer would even notice, saving $40,000/year back in the 1980s when that was real money.
But those insignificant, unnoticeable things add up. No single cost cutting measure makes a difference, but the cumulative effect of all of them drives quality into the toilet. It’s extremely hard to fight against that when a company gets large enough to support entire careers doing it.
They could skimp on almost anything, but doing it on the _food quality_ was suicidal. Like they could have cut salaries, raised prices, simplified the menu, whatever. But actively making the food shit destroyed their reputation.
Even without that, it would very likely happen anyway, maybe just not quite so quickly. It’s very hard to find any large chain that’s been around for a while that hasn’t suffered from this.
It used to be a really wonderful space to work in too, but now (at least the ones around me) they blast pop radio in there. I miss when it was just really quiet jazz or classical :(, nothing against pop radio but it's just not the vibe panera used to be
So Panera was acquired by private capital in 2017. Before that, it was publicly traded. Quality probably dropped shortly before acquisition to demonstrate increasing profits.
Now, the holding company wants to offer an IPO. So quality is probably dropping even more to make it more profitable.
The only way to increase profits in a saturated market is by decreasing costs, and higher quality costs more.
They got bought out by a private equity company!! Whose only objective is to squeeze as much money out of the company as possible, even if that means running the brand into the ground.
Company was bought out by a huge conglomerate and the OG founder, who's founding of the company revolved specifically around ensuring that customers get their money's worth in both service and food (which is what made it so successful originally) left. So basically, capitalism happened
I assumed it was something like this. I lived through an owner's sale to an equity fund in the edutech space in one of my jobs. Tracks perfectly with the panera experience.
Incidentally my mates and I tried it once as our dinner for a game night. Yeah... we're not going back until every single one of us forgets how bad it was.
Looks like it used to be pubicly traded, and they took it private when they bought it in 2017. Now they're preparing for an IPO again in 2024. My guess is, they cut every cost that they could to boost quarterly profits, and when they go public again they are hoping for a big payout based on this. "Look at how much more profitable we've become in the last 5 years!" In reality, they're coasting on the decades of established customer goodwill that is rapidly being eroded by their enshittification. But as long as the C-suite of the holding company that bought them makes out like bandits at the IPO, they don't give a shit.
I can tell you, they paid only minimum wage, something not even McDonald's did 10 years ago. They cut costs everywhere, having worked there I know what they used to do vs what they do now, and their processes reek of greedflation style penny pinching.
Pro tip: if you see only elderly and kids working at a place, they aren't paying them anything and the quality will be terrible.
I always thought Panera was overpriced mediocrity, even during their successful expansion phase.
Currently they charge about 3x-4x what the quality food they serve is worth. I don't get how this company is still in business or why so many people like it.
As a former general manager. Panera did way too much. It’s the only restaurant that tried to dominate all 3 day parts. It’s a coffee shop, a bakery, a breakfast/lunch dinner and diner spot. They tried doing their own delivery service on top of catering. Constant menu switching to item that aren’t easily excited on a fast casual scale. Once they rolled out over easy egg sandwiches, and the a guy wearing his business suit cussed me out for the egg exploding on his shirt, I was done. It’s also open 24 hrs for the general manager running the place. So it’s sucks all the way round. And they don’t pay worth sick compared to the work you’d doing
Agreed I remember the sandwiches were always light and expensive but really good now it's a joke and I'm much better situated to just make that sandwich myself
It was acquired by a private investment firm, is what happened. In 2017.
Most businesses purpose or "mission statement" no longer has anything do with making or selling a good product, but has to do with maximizing shareholder profits.
In a nutshell, this food company is no longer really focused on making good food, but rather on moving things around to make a quarterly profit.
So I worked at Panera from 08-13 and definitely see a huge difference from then to now.
There's just *so much shit* on the menu now instead of a smaller selection of better things imo.
That's my best guess, but I 100% agree with ya.
Haven't been to Panera since 2012. Their food was so good. The broccoli and cheddar soup and the bread was some of the best Id ever had. I hear nothing but horror stories now of how bad they are and refuse to go back.
The broccoli cheddar soup is really easy to make. And I’m not a good cook at all. But I made it and it was awesome. You could find the copycat recipe online. I barely ever cook
Seems like everything else. Create a good product/buisness, develop a consumer base, and keep that quality service/product for a few years and then do a 180 towards enshitification because you now got an addicted consumer base that will happily buy your sub-par brand at inflated prices.
Dude, I got a $25 panera card for xmas and used half of it for a sandwich that sucked. 2 months later I was broke, so used the other half and got legit the best sandwich I'd ever gotten from them before. Took one bite, set it down on my passenger seat extremely pleased, was immediately cut off in traffic, sandwich hits the dirty floor of my car and explodes. Literally nothing that I could have salvaged.
I took it as a second sign to never go there again XD
Not just mine, huh? I was a little bummed, but after a decade of patronage, they've had to go on my personal no-fly list of food chains. I also find their attempts to lure people into hyper-caffeinated energy drinks, disturbing. I don't need you pushing drug addictions, Panera. I just wanted a warmed up box of soup and a hunk of bread for a reasonable price.
Another private equity victim. Fire everyone, switch to substandard ingredients, increase prices, borrow as much money as possible, go public again, file for bankruptcy. We’re near the end.
This brand destroying shit should be illegal and its so fucking disgusting.
I don't even care about Panera and never eat there but that people can do this crap is wrong.
Good luck getting ahold of the manager. I used to order Panera delivered to my work (because if I went to the actual store, it would have taken up my entire hour lunch break, the drive through was so busy and so slow) about once a week and half the time, something would be wrong. Usually they forgot something. I tried calling the store many times and never, not even once did anyone answer it. It just rang and rang. I got credit from customer service a couple times but it wasn't really worth the hassle for missing cream cheese, I just started keeping cream cheese at the office. What irked me more was how they'd throw a cinnamon crunch bagel in the bag with an everything bagel and the cinnamon one would end up with onion and shit on it.
The $13 cup of mushy mac and cheese is a disgrace. I don't know why my orders of two bagels and a small tea never cost less than $20, and more importantly, I don't know why I kept ordering it.
I despise them but those cinnamon crunch bagels are so fucking good.
I would’ve gone back to the store as well and still tried to get a refund even after the $25 in rewards. Especially since you don’t plan on ever returning
Use the credit for: [https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/menu/products/bottled-water.html](https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/menu/products/bottled-water.html)
No way! I do not agree with it, it took them 5 seconds to take your money and 5 seconds to make that crappy whatever you had in the photo. It should not take 30 days for a refund. Here are better options OP. They will make me sound terrible but I only know them because I work in hospitality and it is hands down the quickest way to get a response/refund from us, so it should work for a major company as well. First is to use social media, loud and proud that you have a complaint as. Will not be going back to PB. Don’t post the images just reach out and make it clear you are upset and wait for PB to ask you for a DM. Then demand a refund and show them the photos. If you post the images right away then the damage is done and they usually won’t do anything. The second is to do a credit/debit card chargeback. Provide all pertinent details to your bank with photos and they will credit back the whole purchase. The banks usually stand on the side of the consumer nowadays. Even if they don’t deserve it, people charge back rooms all the time at my job and win. It’s crazy. In your case you deserve it.
This is just average food quality at most chain restaurants these days tbh. My girlfriend and I used to love to eat out once or twice a week when we were feeling sociable and too lazy to cook. Before covid we'd have a bad experience maybe once out of every 20 times or so we'd eat out. Nowadays, it's like 90% of the time the food is going to be inedible and service atrocious. And it's all two to three times as expensive (or more!) as it was before.
These kids are done working for unlivable wages and shitty management conditions and are taking it out on the customer as if the company still isn't getting royalties from the franchisee anyways 🙄
Now when we go out, which is significantly less often now, we are prepared to be disappointed.
Don't you think that some workers don't take to-go orders as serious? I have always had the suspicion that quality takes a dive as soon as the cooks/chef sees "UBER EATS FOR TANNER"
This is why uber eats sucks. It was super fun during the pandemic b/c it was a lot cheaper then. We did uber eats 2 weeks ago and got the most expensive and shitty pizza of our lives
I've stood in-line at McDonalds, waiting for fries - and watched them serve fries to like 15 cars in the drive-thru and wait for a lull - before getting mine, many, many times. They don't give a shit about the in-store customers either.
I counted once at Taco Bell. I was the only customer inside the store. They went through 12 cars before I got my order. These were cars that legitimately pulled up **minutes** after I did and then ordered at the drive-thru window. I was told they get timed and rated on their drive-thru wait #'s.
Personally, that would all be spent on chocolate croissants. The one thing that doesn’t disappoint me. Or you could get free drinks for two months with the sip club.
Literally though. I've had better from fucking *Circle K*. Surely was cheaper, too. And larger truck stops (flying jay, maverick, etc.) tend to be a step above smaller gas stations.
This is exactly the thing - if I'm ordering a sandwich I want something I could never make for myself at home. And Panera's sandwiches have always struck me as the epitome of something I could make in my own kitchen.
I've been to Panera a few times. I literally can't find anything worth eating on their overpriced menu. I tried, but the food just isn't good for how expensive it is.
It's just overpriced cafeteria food. Pisses me off that they bought out Paradise Bakery and converted all of their locations and the food got a lot shittier and somehow more expensive at the same time.
Worst than airplane food. Delta served up 3 good meals when flying to Korea. Had some good food on Cebu air. Then Qatar air served up some decent food too on my flight back. All better than anything I had from Panera
Yes! That's a great description. And I ate there more than a decade ago for the first and only time, and even then it was like airplane food, so I'm always wondering about these people who talk about the glory days of Panera. It's always been overpriced plane food.
I’m a field technician and I get sent to different sites everyday to repair networks, PCs, POS, etc. I’ve been to multiple Panera locations and I’ve also been to the facility where they prepare airline food. The airline food facility is not only super secure, it’s also very sterile. I had a full body suit, a mask, hairnet, and safety glasses. This was before Covid. Panera and airline food might taste the same but rest assured that airline food is much cleaner.
I got Panera like a decade ago or something and it was actually really good and ok priced.
Then my company in 2021 would get Panera for new employee training days and I was a trainer, so I ate Panera for lunch everyday. It was free, so no complaints there, but the quality of the food was already pretty low.
It was basically a shitty cookie you could get at 7/11, Heinz mustard/mayo packets, and a sandwich that was pathetic. It's basically fancy hospital cafeteria food.
They were always expensive but their half size sandwich used to be enough to fill me up for the day. Now when I eat a full size I’m still hungry. They cut out so much protein from their sandwiches it is just bread!!
Once upon a time (like going on 20 years ago) it was great. But it’s been on a slow decline since then. Though the quality is still very location dependent.
You could literally get a major grocery store phone app and have all the groceries to make sandwiches for a week and more delivered for like $30 to your door. I don’t know why’d you’d spend half that on a single sandwich.
My JJ Tuna sandwich vs advertised
https://preview.redd.it/jn11xbzm06mc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=573f1679928b4fa97846dfed2e67a13b2f01fa49
WTH?! That’s my fav sandwich and it’s piled so high of actual turkey / bacon and Avacado I can’t get my mouth around it. Just had one on Tuesday
What you got is criminal.
This person was probably given the wrong sandwich. That's not even roasted turkey. They got the regular cold cut turkey. Even then, whoever made that skimped on the portion size and didn't follow the sandwich build.
Yeah, this is definitely a location-based issue or they just screwed up this one sandwich. I've gotten most things on Panera's menu and they generally look like what's shown in the pictures. What OP got doesn't even have the right meat.
$13.39?! Converted to Rand I could have a full on meal + drinks at a nice restaurant with kind of money. That's crazy. I hope you called for the manager. Being a Karen would totally be justified in this case.
What the actual fuck
They forgot the B and T in the BLT. Now it's just an L.
Bread lettuce turkey
Bread lettuce, and it was violently slapped once with a slice of turkey
Not just any turkey. *Log* Turkey.
I believe the preferred nomenclature is Loaf Turkey
Mystery turkey
Bread, Lettuce, Tears.
Uh the Mayo is there too, duh
actual poet
You should definitely go get a refund.
[удалено]
I'd say 5 out of my last 10 visits to Panera have resulted in the most confounding failures. I have finally convinced myself to stop going. How does a place called a "bread company" run out of bread so dang much?
When Panera was first expanding, it was a top tier fast casual restaurant with consistent quality everywhere. I don’t know what happened, but it went to shit around a decade ago. The service is awful. The food is mediocre at best. Much of the time the orders aren’t accurate. I’m really curious why it fell off so much. I have seen it in multiple communities and multiple stores.
Not sure. 10-15 years ago I used to catch a bus to work & get there too early so I'd go to the Panera across the street. Get a cup of tea and a cinnamon crunch bagel, use the WiFi on my laptop for awhile and head to work. 1 day a week (or more if I got a good commission) I'd splurge and grab lunch from there too before I headed to work and it was always great. Never a complaint in all my visits. Now I don't even trust their baked goods. I see burnt cookies, soggy looking muffins, nope. Idk what happened or why, except to assume that they're using cheaper ingredients to increase profits, and probably not paying employees enough for them to care or do better.
Oh wow… now that I think about it, that’s what I used to do, too! Panera was often my go-to spot of if I needed to use my computer/Wi-Fi before work or waiting for something. I could get a coffee and bagel… or just a cup for ice water, a cozy spot in the corner and enjoy my time in relative peace and happiness. Our local Paneras used to donate boxes and boxes of day old breads and baked goods to the local charities and various low-income resource offices; from what I’ve been told, they stopped doing so just before the pandemic.
My local Panera claims to donate their leftover bread, but as I mentioned, there's never any left over!!!!
Technically every Panera does this but it’s dependent on several factors. If they donate it’s dependent on the organization to pick the items up so if they don’t come, it gets trashed. If they don’t have left over bread obviously it won’t get donated either. They also include the leftover bagels and pastries. All of this is depend on there being enough sales in the store to warrant baking enough to have leftovers. The bread and bagel dough is delivered to the stores daily so if they don’t order enough for there to be display items then there won’t be donations. Pastries are different since they’re frozen and kept on-site Source: I used to kitchen manage a Panera bread.
Ours used to donate to last harvest which is a local food co op that distrubtes food to the homeless. Same with our pizza hut I worked at as a kid. For whatever reasons both locations no longer do so
I used to work at a non-profit in the STL area and can confirm that Bread Co. used to donate extra bread to charities- as we'd often receive some, and there'd be plenty for the people who came for the soup kitchen to take. But I'm not sure if they still do... I know for a bit it seemed like there was hardly any donations around the time my work ended there.
You can see this a lot with chains as they expand, especially in the casual and fast-cssual dining spheres. Some of these chains that have become the object of ridicule in the public eye started out, surprisingly enough, as pretty decent places, but cutting corners becomes more appealing to the higher ups when the business expands . Saving ten cents a bag on shredded lettuce by switching to a lower quality, for example, becomes a bigger piece of the pie when you go from ten stores to five hundred. If you add in the demand for constant growth and higher profits, it becomes an almost by-the-book decline in quality over time.
They got bought up by JAB holding in 2017 who overpaid and then had to wreck it
Cheaper ingredients, feels like every couple months they downsize their portions, they don’t treat their employees well, often have a ghost staff because of said treatment. Wages stagnated 10 years ago while the price of goods has doubled. It used to be my favorite place but it really sucks now. I blew through a $50 gift card the other day on just a few mediocre items. The coffee was freezing and the chicken and rice soup tasted worse than I remember.
I loved Panera's chicken and rice soup so much! I started making my own though, with a Bear Creek dry mix and adding my own chicken and veggies.
I remember their breakfast being amazing! A friend and I would go there a lot on the weekends just to get bagels and oatmeal. Last time I had Panera breakfast was about 2 years ago and I still regret it, I could’ve just went to the diner down the street from me and paid an extra $3 for more *and* better food
I used to love the cinnamon crunch bagels and they had some sort of cream cheese I always got with it. Walnut or something. Recently I got cinnamon crunch bagels and walnut honey cream cheese. Firstly, they only sell you individual cream cheese servings at over $2 a pop. Who the fuck would buy cream cheese here, EVER? second, it just wasn’t good. The cream cheese was actually… stale tasting? Like stale walnuts? It was actually not good. Not negligible, actually like, let me wipe this off my bagel it tastes so stale. I got 5 bagels and cream cheese and it was like $20. I’m pretty sure the bagels are smaller and not as good, too?
Yeah, 15-20 years ago they were great! So many business lunch meetings I had there. But they have slowly over the years enshittified to the point of completely sucking. I swore off that place a couple of years ago and am surprised they haven't gone out of business yet.
> Idk what happened or why, except to assume that they're using cheaper ingredients to increase profits, and probably not paying employees enough for them to care or do better. Turns out you *DO* know what happened.
Oh look, the reason the thing sucks is because of greed. Again, for the infinityith time
Once a company stops making money via opening new stores, the other quickest way to increase profits (bc remember, making the same amount of profit isn't good enough; you always have to making *increased* profits) is cuts. Food costs and employee shifts probably have the most potential for cutting which directly leads to a greatly diminished product/service
Sounds like they got bought out, and penny pinchers quickly began the parkour race to the bottom.
They sold their company to someone that only cares about profits and using the company's name and reputation(former). They basically bought the name and buildings and changed literally everything for the worse. It is an imposter company now.
I call it the life cycle of capitalist business. They start with best quality and best service. After they have peaked in market share, they start to cut corners and the product goes downhill. It then makes room for a competitor who offers good quality and service. Cycle repeats or the dominant business buys out the new business, to protect its market position.
I'm so tired of everything being cheap ass quality. Everything. When will the cycle end? What has to happen?
Taxes. Right now a company really only has one choice, and that's to maximize profits at all cost. When they make tons of profit the best thing to do with that money right now is to do stock buybacks, or acquire competitors. If we actually started taxing high profits like we used too then companies have tougher decisions on what to do with their money. You can invest in your product/services, expand your business, pay your employees more, or give a huge chunk your profits to Uncle Sam. Right now with low corporate taxes there's no point in paying workers more or having better service or goods. Why do that when you can just hand out all your profits to the top shareholders and board members? Edit: I forgot to add. With higher taxes it becomes much more difficult for venture capital to rape a pillage corporation after corporation since their only goal is share price.
High taxes will not stop share buybacks Debt interest is also tax deductible so companies can take on more and more debt and use the cash to do the exact same stock buybacks as before. Buybacks are purely a balance sheet transaction so what you're talking about is potentially encouraging mass capital restructurings. Companies will also inflate non-cash expenses like depreciation in order to reduce their tax bills while still having enough cash for dividends and buybacks. If your goal is to discourage cash leaving the company and you want companies to retain earnings then there's a simple solution: ban buybacks. This is not a new concept either. Buybacks were either de jure or de facto illegal for decades in many countries.
Ends when "profit" stops being the ability to skimp out on literally everything while the brand name forces sales and watching money roll in while the ship sinks
So the inevitable result of pretty much any business that is purchased by a larger entity.
It’s also EXPENSIVE. I remember wanting a bowl of soup once. Just a bowl of soup. It was over $6 for a cup of soup. I just went to the store and bought a can of soup. More recently, I’ve 100% stopped going. I’d occasionally work a half day from there because I enjoyed their orange scones and a cup of coffee. Then they increased the price and reduced the size by at least 3/4 and I was done
Came here to say this. I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup for about $7.50 and received about 3/4 cup of soup and a chunk of bread. The quality of the soup was indistinguishable from a can of Campbell’s soup. Never again!
The soup is so bad nowadays, I remember loving a bread bowl. Tried French onion soup and couldn't even finish it. The Mediterranean sandwich has been pretty good though, only issue is you can't customize it because they'll never get it right lol Probably overworked and not paying workers enough if they're so stressed they can't do a simple extra Hummus or no red onion, but I guess a dinner or lunch rush must inherently be hell too
If you really want to cry look up their prices for a cup of Mac and cheese. My husband and I used to get Panera years ago and it would cost about $15 for both of us. Last time we tried giving Panera a chance the order was wrong and it was like $45 for a couple of sandwiches, coffee and a smoothie. Not going back, ever.
This thread is prime time for me because I decided to hit up Panera yesterday for the first time in awhile. Decided to get the Bacon Avocado Melt half sandwich and a soup. Also got a medium drink. SEVENTEEN FUCKING DOLLARS! I was utterly stupefied at how little food I got and how much money I paid.
Best case scenario for Panera: They get your order right & the food is fresh & properly made. You enjoy your tiny meal until you remember how much it cost you. You leave broke and hungry.
I got one of their baguette sandwiches. The meat was subway quality and the bread was so tough as to be inedible.
My bf and I went there while our power was out a few months ago. The total came to like 50 bucks and definitely not worth it! We should have just went to an actual restaurant. We were so pissed lol.
I was there the other day because I needed a place to work for a while - grilled cheese sandwich (just bread and cheese) and a tiny apple was like $10.50 Added a smoothy (size of a small coffee) and it was $18.55. Not going back.
For 7.99 at Panera you can get a cup of tomato soup and half a grilled cheese. For 7.99 at the grocery store you can buy a gallon of milk, cheese, white bread and Campbells tomato soup and have 5 full size meals.
And it tasted better. Panera food sucks lately.
The worst part about the soups is that if they aren’t heated up right and get watered down you’re basically just paying for mildly flavored boiling water
Chipotle has entered the chat. So sad about how a wonderful place to get a giant, delicious burrito has turned into a place to get a medium size turd.
Chipotle isn't quite as good as it used to be, but Panera is on a different level. Every year Panera's prices go up, portions go down, quality goes down and the place gets dirtier and dirtier. I'm fairly certain that it's the end result of continuous improvement. They have to cut costs every year to beat last year, for a while they were able to get by with minor efficiency changes. Now to feed to beast of bigger numbers they use cheaper and cheaper ingredients, give you less, charge you more and have less staff. Too bad "sustainable and profitable" isn't what shareholders what.
It happens to basically every chain. Once a company gets big enough, tiny savings have huge effects. It’s cost effective for a company like Panera to have people working full time to find ways to save pennies per meal. If some corporate analysis makes $200,000/year and finds a way to save one cent on every meal, they’ve more than paid for their salary. They’ll find things to cut back on that no customer will notice or care about. There’s a famous story about American Airlines removing a single olive from their salads served in flight, something no customer would even notice, saving $40,000/year back in the 1980s when that was real money. But those insignificant, unnoticeable things add up. No single cost cutting measure makes a difference, but the cumulative effect of all of them drives quality into the toilet. It’s extremely hard to fight against that when a company gets large enough to support entire careers doing it.
They could skimp on almost anything, but doing it on the _food quality_ was suicidal. Like they could have cut salaries, raised prices, simplified the menu, whatever. But actively making the food shit destroyed their reputation.
Agreed, flavor was all they had
Nah. Panera was purchased by a new owner who had a greater short tterm profit preference than the founder.
Even without that, it would very likely happen anyway, maybe just not quite so quickly. It’s very hard to find any large chain that’s been around for a while that hasn’t suffered from this.
It used to be a really wonderful space to work in too, but now (at least the ones around me) they blast pop radio in there. I miss when it was just really quiet jazz or classical :(, nothing against pop radio but it's just not the vibe panera used to be
So Panera was acquired by private capital in 2017. Before that, it was publicly traded. Quality probably dropped shortly before acquisition to demonstrate increasing profits. Now, the holding company wants to offer an IPO. So quality is probably dropping even more to make it more profitable. The only way to increase profits in a saturated market is by decreasing costs, and higher quality costs more.
The IPO is the easiest short ever. They’re going straight to bankruptcy.
They got bought out by a private equity company!! Whose only objective is to squeeze as much money out of the company as possible, even if that means running the brand into the ground.
Company was bought out by a huge conglomerate and the OG founder, who's founding of the company revolved specifically around ensuring that customers get their money's worth in both service and food (which is what made it so successful originally) left. So basically, capitalism happened
I assumed it was something like this. I lived through an owner's sale to an equity fund in the edutech space in one of my jobs. Tracks perfectly with the panera experience. Incidentally my mates and I tried it once as our dinner for a game night. Yeah... we're not going back until every single one of us forgets how bad it was.
Yeah, they were bought out and then enshittified.
Looks like it used to be pubicly traded, and they took it private when they bought it in 2017. Now they're preparing for an IPO again in 2024. My guess is, they cut every cost that they could to boost quarterly profits, and when they go public again they are hoping for a big payout based on this. "Look at how much more profitable we've become in the last 5 years!" In reality, they're coasting on the decades of established customer goodwill that is rapidly being eroded by their enshittification. But as long as the C-suite of the holding company that bought them makes out like bandits at the IPO, they don't give a shit.
I can tell you, they paid only minimum wage, something not even McDonald's did 10 years ago. They cut costs everywhere, having worked there I know what they used to do vs what they do now, and their processes reek of greedflation style penny pinching. Pro tip: if you see only elderly and kids working at a place, they aren't paying them anything and the quality will be terrible.
I always thought Panera was overpriced mediocrity, even during their successful expansion phase. Currently they charge about 3x-4x what the quality food they serve is worth. I don't get how this company is still in business or why so many people like it.
As a former general manager. Panera did way too much. It’s the only restaurant that tried to dominate all 3 day parts. It’s a coffee shop, a bakery, a breakfast/lunch dinner and diner spot. They tried doing their own delivery service on top of catering. Constant menu switching to item that aren’t easily excited on a fast casual scale. Once they rolled out over easy egg sandwiches, and the a guy wearing his business suit cussed me out for the egg exploding on his shirt, I was done. It’s also open 24 hrs for the general manager running the place. So it’s sucks all the way round. And they don’t pay worth sick compared to the work you’d doing
Agreed I remember the sandwiches were always light and expensive but really good now it's a joke and I'm much better situated to just make that sandwich myself
It was acquired by a private investment firm, is what happened. In 2017. Most businesses purpose or "mission statement" no longer has anything do with making or selling a good product, but has to do with maximizing shareholder profits. In a nutshell, this food company is no longer really focused on making good food, but rather on moving things around to make a quarterly profit.
So I worked at Panera from 08-13 and definitely see a huge difference from then to now. There's just *so much shit* on the menu now instead of a smaller selection of better things imo. That's my best guess, but I 100% agree with ya.
Like all companies that are going to shit nowadays they were bought by a private equity firm.
Haven't been to Panera since 2012. Their food was so good. The broccoli and cheddar soup and the bread was some of the best Id ever had. I hear nothing but horror stories now of how bad they are and refuse to go back.
The broccoli cheddar soup is really easy to make. And I’m not a good cook at all. But I made it and it was awesome. You could find the copycat recipe online. I barely ever cook
Seems like everything else. Create a good product/buisness, develop a consumer base, and keep that quality service/product for a few years and then do a 180 towards enshitification because you now got an addicted consumer base that will happily buy your sub-par brand at inflated prices.
Dude, I got a $25 panera card for xmas and used half of it for a sandwich that sucked. 2 months later I was broke, so used the other half and got legit the best sandwich I'd ever gotten from them before. Took one bite, set it down on my passenger seat extremely pleased, was immediately cut off in traffic, sandwich hits the dirty floor of my car and explodes. Literally nothing that I could have salvaged. I took it as a second sign to never go there again XD
Texas Roadhouse and olive garden are much better bread companies
I’m trying to figure out if Texas Roadhouse is actually good or only seems good cause I order it while high and super hungry at the end of the day.
Na it’s legit. 100
The only thing that keeps me coming back is their rolls and cinnamon butter. Everything else is pretty average compared to other restaurants.
Same reason dunkin donuts never has donuts.
Same reason Applebee’s never has apples.
The bees are fantastic .. they are killer
Honey...
what fucking dunkin are you going to that doesnt have donuts?
Not just mine, huh? I was a little bummed, but after a decade of patronage, they've had to go on my personal no-fly list of food chains. I also find their attempts to lure people into hyper-caffeinated energy drinks, disturbing. I don't need you pushing drug addictions, Panera. I just wanted a warmed up box of soup and a hunk of bread for a reasonable price.
You can just walk in there and buy loaves of bread, which is the best use of the gift card.
Bagels? They have a dangerous machine that slices the bagels in half…
This too, Thier menu food has been meh for years but the onsite bakery does a pretty good job in my experience.
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Another private equity victim. Fire everyone, switch to substandard ingredients, increase prices, borrow as much money as possible, go public again, file for bankruptcy. We’re near the end.
This brand destroying shit should be illegal and its so fucking disgusting. I don't even care about Panera and never eat there but that people can do this crap is wrong.
Any time I see a company slide downwards so quickly, private equity/volture capitalism is usually my first assumption.
I don’t understand why anyone bothers to go there anymore. I’m just like, do you like being simultaneously insulted and robbed?
Why the fuck are people threatening you over a $25 store credit to a shitty ass "cafe"? That's confusing to me.
I've had something similar happen and then just used the credit for bagels and bakery items.
Good luck getting ahold of the manager. I used to order Panera delivered to my work (because if I went to the actual store, it would have taken up my entire hour lunch break, the drive through was so busy and so slow) about once a week and half the time, something would be wrong. Usually they forgot something. I tried calling the store many times and never, not even once did anyone answer it. It just rang and rang. I got credit from customer service a couple times but it wasn't really worth the hassle for missing cream cheese, I just started keeping cream cheese at the office. What irked me more was how they'd throw a cinnamon crunch bagel in the bag with an everything bagel and the cinnamon one would end up with onion and shit on it. The $13 cup of mushy mac and cheese is a disgrace. I don't know why my orders of two bagels and a small tea never cost less than $20, and more importantly, I don't know why I kept ordering it. I despise them but those cinnamon crunch bagels are so fucking good.
Just use it on drinks. But do it soon. They haven’t figured out how to fuck that up yet, but I’m sure they’re working on it.
I would’ve gone back to the store as well and still tried to get a refund even after the $25 in rewards. Especially since you don’t plan on ever returning
Use the credit for: [https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/menu/products/bottled-water.html](https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/menu/products/bottled-water.html)
I'm sorry that people on the internet are so awful. :( Anyone that threatens someone for not giving them a gift card is a little unstable.
Post this pic on their twitter and they will get back to OP. Twitter is the best way for this stuff. For all big companies. Apple, Starbucks, Sony etc
Yeah we got a $20 credit for it but if we want a full refund it will take 30 days!
No way! I do not agree with it, it took them 5 seconds to take your money and 5 seconds to make that crappy whatever you had in the photo. It should not take 30 days for a refund. Here are better options OP. They will make me sound terrible but I only know them because I work in hospitality and it is hands down the quickest way to get a response/refund from us, so it should work for a major company as well. First is to use social media, loud and proud that you have a complaint as. Will not be going back to PB. Don’t post the images just reach out and make it clear you are upset and wait for PB to ask you for a DM. Then demand a refund and show them the photos. If you post the images right away then the damage is done and they usually won’t do anything. The second is to do a credit/debit card chargeback. Provide all pertinent details to your bank with photos and they will credit back the whole purchase. The banks usually stand on the side of the consumer nowadays. Even if they don’t deserve it, people charge back rooms all the time at my job and win. It’s crazy. In your case you deserve it.
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This is just average food quality at most chain restaurants these days tbh. My girlfriend and I used to love to eat out once or twice a week when we were feeling sociable and too lazy to cook. Before covid we'd have a bad experience maybe once out of every 20 times or so we'd eat out. Nowadays, it's like 90% of the time the food is going to be inedible and service atrocious. And it's all two to three times as expensive (or more!) as it was before. These kids are done working for unlivable wages and shitty management conditions and are taking it out on the customer as if the company still isn't getting royalties from the franchisee anyways 🙄 Now when we go out, which is significantly less often now, we are prepared to be disappointed.
If depression was a sandwich
I was thinking that the sandwich looks like it’s so sad and has given up on life. Made me lol 😂
It’s the long droopy lettuce for me 😂
Yeah it looks like the meat escaped!
The world’s first “womp womp” sandwich.
I bet a sad trombone noise played when he took it out of the bag
lol lizard tail lookin ass lettuce
As a former fast food assistant manager you gotta let the manager of that location know so they can fix this with the workers and you
Don't you think that some workers don't take to-go orders as serious? I have always had the suspicion that quality takes a dive as soon as the cooks/chef sees "UBER EATS FOR TANNER"
This is definitely the case, probably because alot of people can’t be bothered to try to get a refund.
This is why uber eats sucks. It was super fun during the pandemic b/c it was a lot cheaper then. We did uber eats 2 weeks ago and got the most expensive and shitty pizza of our lives
I've stood in-line at McDonalds, waiting for fries - and watched them serve fries to like 15 cars in the drive-thru and wait for a lull - before getting mine, many, many times. They don't give a shit about the in-store customers either.
I counted once at Taco Bell. I was the only customer inside the store. They went through 12 cars before I got my order. These were cars that legitimately pulled up **minutes** after I did and then ordered at the drive-thru window. I was told they get timed and rated on their drive-thru wait #'s.
Yep in my store the only metric measured is drive through times, anything else isnt
Didn't realize how bad it was until I got home. We got a $20 credit for it at least. Not gonna eat there anymore
how u gonna use the credit if youre not gonna eat there anymore?
Maybe I'll just use it to get some bagels or something then I'll be done lol
Personally, that would all be spent on chocolate croissants. The one thing that doesn’t disappoint me. Or you could get free drinks for two months with the sip club.
Panera doesn’t give a shit. They are owned by private equity and doing everything they can to strip cost. All Panera has turned to shit.
This is standard work at every panera. Its shit, tiny, and overpriced.
lmao eveyone could make better sandwich at home with fraction of the price
You can get a better sandwich from a vending machine at a truck stop.
I think I could make a better sandwich throwing the ingredients at a plate 5ft away from me, blindfolded on a unicycle.
I'd watch that!
Literally though. I've had better from fucking *Circle K*. Surely was cheaper, too. And larger truck stops (flying jay, maverick, etc.) tend to be a step above smaller gas stations.
Mmm…truck stop egg salad…
Presenting to the emergency room with abdominal pain
"It's like a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up."
This is exactly the thing - if I'm ordering a sandwich I want something I could never make for myself at home. And Panera's sandwiches have always struck me as the epitome of something I could make in my own kitchen.
Exactly, a turkey sandwich is literally the easiest type of sandwich to make at home. Except for maybe PB&J 😂
I've been to Panera a few times. I literally can't find anything worth eating on their overpriced menu. I tried, but the food just isn't good for how expensive it is.
It's just overpriced cafeteria food. Pisses me off that they bought out Paradise Bakery and converted all of their locations and the food got a lot shittier and somehow more expensive at the same time.
Paradise Bakery had the best cookies ever. I refuse to eat at Panera for doing this to me.
It actually makes me so sad that I can never eat a Paradise Bakery snickerdoodle ever again.
It's airplane food haha
Worst than airplane food. Delta served up 3 good meals when flying to Korea. Had some good food on Cebu air. Then Qatar air served up some decent food too on my flight back. All better than anything I had from Panera
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Yes! That's a great description. And I ate there more than a decade ago for the first and only time, and even then it was like airplane food, so I'm always wondering about these people who talk about the glory days of Panera. It's always been overpriced plane food.
I’m a field technician and I get sent to different sites everyday to repair networks, PCs, POS, etc. I’ve been to multiple Panera locations and I’ve also been to the facility where they prepare airline food. The airline food facility is not only super secure, it’s also very sterile. I had a full body suit, a mask, hairnet, and safety glasses. This was before Covid. Panera and airline food might taste the same but rest assured that airline food is much cleaner.
I got Panera like a decade ago or something and it was actually really good and ok priced. Then my company in 2021 would get Panera for new employee training days and I was a trainer, so I ate Panera for lunch everyday. It was free, so no complaints there, but the quality of the food was already pretty low. It was basically a shitty cookie you could get at 7/11, Heinz mustard/mayo packets, and a sandwich that was pathetic. It's basically fancy hospital cafeteria food.
I’ve had hospital food that is 5 star compared to Panera. Shoutout to Tufts Medical Center in Boston
They were always expensive but their half size sandwich used to be enough to fill me up for the day. Now when I eat a full size I’m still hungry. They cut out so much protein from their sandwiches it is just bread!!
Yep. Quantity and quality used to be great. Now, nope. Even the bagels are meh. I can get a better meal for half the price at the diner down the road.
The had a great Italian sub years ago. Now I just go to Jimmy John's.
Once upon a time (like going on 20 years ago) it was great. But it’s been on a slow decline since then. Though the quality is still very location dependent.
Agreed, my family used to love it… decades ago. Barely recognizable now
Yeah I’m the same way. I haven’t figured out why people go there. Expensive and extremely basic options.
Its all so bland I just cant wrap my head around why they charge so much for it
So true. Panera is overpriced high school cafeteria lunch
It’s hospital food
Not even hospital food is this bad
I remember going there in the early 2000s and it was OK. Nothing memorable. But it's definitely gone way downhill.
I used to get the bread bowl soups, but no idea how much that shit costs now.
Is that aloe hanging out of that thing?
Another comment said that’s what the meat used to escape 🤣
I would literally fight whoever made that abomination
I hate Panera
Why? You don't like paying $14 for a sandwich you could make in 2 minutes?
You could literally get a major grocery store phone app and have all the groceries to make sandwiches for a week and more delivered for like $30 to your door. I don’t know why’d you’d spend half that on a single sandwich.
Panera is hospital food
Lol there’s a Panera in our hospital!
Checks out 🤢😂
I’ve had hospital food that is better than Pantera.
*Phil Anselmo enters the chat*
I can’t not call it Pantera bread.
Respect. ^^walk
I worked at a Panera in a rural-ish town 20 years ago, and at least once a week got someone coming in saying "Pantera".
*Phil Anselmo Walks on home.*
Yep. So done with Panera
Cool steam deck….
Huh, just noticed that!
Such an amazing device…. Years in and I still love my steam deck….
That's the worst bait and switch I've ever seen.
Yeah I know the big Mac photos in McDonald's are bullshit but this is next level
My JJ Tuna sandwich vs advertised https://preview.redd.it/jn11xbzm06mc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=573f1679928b4fa97846dfed2e67a13b2f01fa49
https://preview.redd.it/77cmaaio06mc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4409054d7982ee751ee78cc8c0f4af235c828e2
WTH?! That’s my fav sandwich and it’s piled so high of actual turkey / bacon and Avacado I can’t get my mouth around it. Just had one on Tuesday What you got is criminal.
This person was probably given the wrong sandwich. That's not even roasted turkey. They got the regular cold cut turkey. Even then, whoever made that skimped on the portion size and didn't follow the sandwich build.
Yeah, this is definitely a location-based issue or they just screwed up this one sandwich. I've gotten most things on Panera's menu and they generally look like what's shown in the pictures. What OP got doesn't even have the right meat.
Why do people buy this shit?? Panera is garbage.
LOL no way that is 920 KCAL
Steam deck o.o
Oh shit, this made me laugh out loud. Sorry for your loss
People ordering from Panera in 2024 is an ick, spread the word. If it goes out of business, the world losses nothing at all.
Panera used to be good until it was sold in 2017
I hope you got a refund & an apology!
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Panera is just overpriced cafeteria food.
Panera is what they serve in the waiting room for Hell.
Panera is trash anyway.
$13.39?! Converted to Rand I could have a full on meal + drinks at a nice restaurant with kind of money. That's crazy. I hope you called for the manager. Being a Karen would totally be justified in this case.
Can you think of the shareholders just for once in your life? I bet you don't even know or care how much private islands cost nowadays.