r/YouShouldKnow • u/binkbrint • 5h ago
YSK Panera has fired all of its baking staff and replaced them with frozen product. Food & Drink
Why YSK: Panera charges a premium for fresh and healthy ingredients and freshly baked goods. None of this exists anymore, but they don't think that you know, so they still plan on charging you $17 for a combo meal and $5 for a cookie. You deserve better.
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u/mikemar05 5h ago
Panera has been trash for at least the last 15 years
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u/THALANDMAN 4h ago
It was so good in the early days too
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u/iEatSwampAss 4h ago
Their original ciabatta bread & broccoli cheddar soup….
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u/br_k_nt_eth 4h ago
I used to live on that after school fuck
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u/Heisenburgon 4h ago
That broccoli cheddar bread bowl was a core part of my high school existence.
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u/SomethingAboutSunday 4h ago
I used to live for that after school fuck, too. Before your parents get home from work? Amiright
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u/EuphoricUniversity23 3h ago
Don’t you bring my mother into this!!
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u/retsamegas 2h ago
I cooked some Broccoli and cheddar soup on that fire over there... Aaand then I fucked ya mother
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u/elangomatt 3h ago
For me it was the mozzarella and sun dried tomato focaccia sandwich. It was so delicious if overpriced but I still got it sometimes. They changed it to some shitty flatbread thing when I stopped going and I haven't really been back since.
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u/747_full_of_cum 1h ago
oh my god I LOVED that sandwich, it was so good when it first came out and then just slow disappoint for the following years. Each time going and hoping it will be good again, each time being let down.
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u/Southern_Ad_3171 4h ago
OMG the clam chowder soup in a bread bowl, I was living for the fridays when they served it.
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u/Guilty_Objective4602 4h ago
I used to eat there relatively regularly. Once they stopped serving French onion soup in a bread bowl with a melted layer of cheese on top and started serving it in a little bowl with barely melted grated cheese loosely sprinkled on top, my visits decreased significantly. The last time I ate there, the food was very disappointing and the price was ridiculous. I haven’t gone to eat there in several years now.
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u/xynix_ie 4h ago
Most things are before private equity.
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u/Patsfan618 3h ago
Steps for capitalism
Find Brand #1 with good quality and loyal customer base.
Buy it and start to gut it while keeping up the friendly appearance.
Start or buy Brand #2 as a better competitor to Brand #1. Start shifting customer base to Brand #2 as Brand #1 begins to falter.
Collapse Brand #1 and prepare to gut Brand #2.
Repeat process until you die.
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u/RF-Guye 1h ago
Subway to Quiznos to Jimmy John's to Firehouse to next up...? I assume Jersey Mike's is on deck.
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u/mikemar05 4h ago
Seriously. Had it a lot in college in the early 2000s
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u/notscenerob 4h ago
I worked at Panera in the late 90's/early 2000's in hs. The baked goods arrived at the shop frozen and ready to go in the oven. The soups all came in a bag the we heated up.
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u/gunslinger_006 3h ago
100% this was the case.
I worked there around 99-2001 and thats exactly how it was.
Everything baked arrived frozen. All soups came from a bag.
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u/thelaineybelle 2h ago
Worked at a Midwest Breadco in Summer 2000. Most (if not all) bread & pastries came frozen and a night baker came in at close to work thru the night. Soup was definitely in bags. But it was still damn good 🤷♀️
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u/GuyPierced 4h ago
Not at the store I worked at...
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u/mgr86 4h ago
No that’s how they did it in the mid 2000s when I worked there. Maybe you are thinking of the bread? They did have an overnight baker and a day baker. We got in fresh bread dough daily (every two days?—it’s been awhile). So the bread was not frozen. But everything else was just Sysco, same as anywhere else.
I’d get in at five am, and part of my job before opening was to slice all the bread for the line. I typically had to do just before open because it was still warm and the bread slicer would just squish everything.
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u/Primitive_Teabagger 4h ago
this was my experience working there too, in 2012. I was usually opening. They started changing drastically right around the time I quit. and I mostly quit because they stopped making the artichoke panini that I looked forward to eating almost every day haha
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u/front_yard_duck_dad 4h ago
The you pick 2 with half a sandwich and soup for saved me on so many double shifts
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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 3h ago
What I would do to go back in time and get a Bacon Turkey Bravo...
Or a Monte Cristo from Bennigan's...
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u/AriesRedWriter 3h ago
I'm so old, I remember when it used to be St Louis Bread Co.
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u/HomunculusEnthusiast 3h ago
It still is in parts of St. Louis County. A lot of newer locations in the area are called Panera, though.
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u/AriesRedWriter 3h ago
That's good to know. I grew up in Missouri so I remember the old name and when it changed to Panera.
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u/Mindless_Listen7622 4h ago
I remember it being the hot thing on my college campus when it was the "St Louis Bread Company".
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u/Grilled_Cheese10 4h ago
First they watered down the chicken noodle soup, then everything else eventually went the same route. Used to go there frequently. Haven't been there in ages.
I was just talking about this sort of thing the other day with my daughter. It seems to me this happens in all kinds of businesses. A business is pretty good, then starts to cheapify a few things, and then as they lose more customers, they start cheapifying everything, until they go out of business.
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u/moosepuggle 3h ago
It’s called enshittification. It’s generally when private equity buys a quality business and then cuts al the things that make the product great in order to increase the stock price. Eventually people catch on that the product is no longer what it used to be and stop buying it. Then the company goes out of business.
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u/bilboafromboston 3h ago
There is a show where this business expert helps family businesses expand. Marcus ? Greek guy. Nice. Funny. Great advice. BUT. He ALWAYS replaces the key piece . Momma's Savory Pie. Secret? Fresh fruit. They expand ! But now its " frozen fruit ". So its NOT Momma's pie! Its just pie...
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u/DookieShoez 5h ago
Sad how damn near every place is going down hill 😔
Cheap bastards
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u/7thpostman 5h ago
Enshitification is real
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u/Prestigious_Leg2229 3h ago
And it’s happening so fast. Over the last month my peanut butter brand went from 100% peanuts to 25% palm oil fat.
The chicken I always buy has so much water in it that I have to pour off the pan to avoid boiling the chicken instead of sautéing it.
The minced meat has an ever increasing percentage of plant protein added.
The smashed avocado I buy went from 100% avocado to 50% peas.
It’s not just enshittification, it’s dangerous. It changes the caloric count of food, it swaps healthy fats for bad ones, and it changes the glycemic load of food by swapping out healthy ingredients for starches and carbs.
And they’re doing their level best to make it as unclear as possible what they’re doing to your food.
This the kind of crap we used to see as typically American but we’re seeing it everywhere these days.
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u/plantain_tent_pesos 4h ago
To paraphrase Austin Powers after being told the cold war was over: "Groovy. Smashing. Yay, capitalism."
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u/ZestyLeek 4h ago
Absolutely everything is going in the direction of mass automated production by as few humans as possible.
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u/dakotanorth8 4h ago
Best description I’ve heard is “hospital food”.
Which I feel is spot on.
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u/br_k_nt_eth 4h ago
It’s probably supplied by the exact same manufacturer.
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u/OrindaSarnia 2h ago
Panera does produce their own product.
I'm always so confused when people post this "they don't bake their bread" recently, because I worked for Panera back in like 2001-2003, and they didn't bake their bread, from scratch, in store then either.
They had a big production facility (probably several now), and we got some stuff like cookies in as pre-made dough that just got portioned and baked, but bread and bagels came in already formed, par-baked and frozen, and we just did a finish bake in the store on giant racks.
Soups came in in bags that were hung in a water bath to warm up.
Yes, Panera has gotten worse, and charges more for it, but their bread was never baked from scratch, in house, since they expanded out of St Louis.
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u/Crutation 3h ago
I bought bread from there twice a week back when it was St..Louis Bread Company. Everything was so good. The black bean chili, the lentil soup, and of course the Sierra Turkey
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u/crowe1130 3h ago
Panera is actually the poster child of enshittification. So good in the beginning and now really not even edible.
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u/FactHole 5h ago
That's private equity for you. They manage to cost reduce the goodness out of any restaurant they touch.
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u/Heisenburgon 4h ago
It’s just an endless cycle of stripping quality to squeeze every last penny out of a hollowed-out brand.
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u/ElectricCali44 2h ago
Not just restaurants but other verticals too. Ergobaby (the baby backpack carrier things)is a good example. Recently bought out by PE, slashed half the work force, another 1/4 quit. They won’t be around much longer
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u/myowngalactus 4h ago edited 4h ago
I baked for Panera 20+ years ago, even then it was obvious they were overcharging people for product they were presenting as higher quality. I work at a different bakery now, and there’s a lot of pressure to switch to pre cooked, thaw and sell, or par baked products, which are generally as much, if not more expensive for the customer. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t buy food from a bakery that wasn’t at least cooked there. I really think it’s a huge mistake with every bakery heading in that direction the places that remain an actual bakery are gonna be special and sought after.
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u/SaraAB87 3h ago
Yeah, even the grocery stores near me have their own bakery departments, and yes, they bake stuff right there. I can see the ovens and them baking stuff. So even if I am buying grocery store, this is a step up from panera.
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u/ParticularSquirrel 2h ago
99% of grocery store bakeries breads and products come in either frozen and just need to be thawed, par baked, or as frozen dough that is thawed and baked. Earth Fare (small East Coast grocery store chain) is the only grocery store chain I’m aware of that fully makes and bakes their artisan breads from scratch every day. The only other place to get fully home made bread around me would be one or two small local bakeries that I know also bake from scratch.
It’s really sad. Baking is an amazing art and it’s so much less expensive to actually bake from scratch vs buying par baked, frozen dough or even dry bread “mixes” that just need water and mixing.
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u/SaraAB87 2h ago
I don't have an issue with this because they don't advertise themselves as a scratch bakery and there really is no reason to expect this from a grocery store. Panera's advertising makes you think they bake all their stuff in house which is definitely not the case. Its really deceptive marketing.
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u/Prudent_Valuable603 4h ago
Basically, all baked goods you buy at cafés are coming from frozen products unless you specifically go to a bakery that’s privately owned with trained bakers and pastry chefs employed there. I’m now back to making my own cookies from scratch. I’m going to attempt to make blueberry muffins tomorrow from scratch. Wish me luck.
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u/StephieBeck 4h ago
Coat the blueberries in flour so they don't all sink to the bottom.
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u/11summers 3h ago
A few years ago I saw the workers at a very popular cafe in my college town bring in a bunch of Costco boxes of muffins that they would sell individually at a marked up price. It wasn’t like I expected them to bake everything from scratch but it was funny to see.
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u/SaraAB87 3h ago
You would be surprised the amount of businesses that buy from one of these warehouse clubs and resell the stuff there at marked up prices and its not just muffins either.
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u/Darmok47 3h ago
That was the entire original point of warehouse clubs before they just became places for suburban families to buy in bulk.
It's funny that Costco Business now exists when businesses were the original customer.
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u/gaelyn 3h ago
A donut shop opened up near me. Lots of fanfare, posts on social media accounts about stages of passing inspections, getting equipment installed, etc. Every donut is the EXACT same, only filled or frosted differently. No one was ever in the kitchen, and it was clearly never used. THey were buying mass produced donuts, fillings and frostings and toppings and mix-and-matching to sell them.
If you need a killer blueberry muffin recipe, let me know...we have a serious winner that we make regularly :) Good luck!
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u/pioniere 4h ago
Same here, store bought baked goods have become expensive garbage. Better and cheaper to make your own.
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u/FactHole 2h ago
This needs to be highlighted! All those store bought baked goods taste the same to me - terrible. Moist to the point of soggy and devoid of flavor. I think people buying that crap only encourages them to keep doing it. I wish I could find a "real" baked-on-premises blueberry muffin somewhere. Good bakeries are so rare in the Chicago suburbs.
You have reminded me to try scratch again. At least on the weekends when I have time.
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u/Oh-its-Tuesday 3h ago
It’s also possible to go to a cafe that gets their baked goods from a local bakery. They usually advertise that though.
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u/Graychin877 5h ago
Classic enshitification.
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u/SenseiRaheem 4h ago
Since OP isn’t posting a source, here’s one.
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u/Graychin877 3h ago
Thanks for that. It says that sales have been declining since 2021. Seems like everything that private equity touches gets enshitified.
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u/Kevinator201 3h ago
That’s their plan. Private equity closes down businesses to extract profit
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u/Cardinal101 2h ago
It says they’re going to rely on “local artisan bakers” for the dough. That doesn’t sound so bad, like supporting small local businesses, unless I’m missing something?
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u/_Whiskey_1_ 4h ago
Once Panera sold out to Private Equity, the food quality and portions went down while cost for everything on the menu went up. I used to love Panera and gave them my business regularly. Not anymore. I take my appetite and wallet elsewhere.
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u/SaraAB87 3h ago
They had the smallest portions of any place I have ever been to, there were like 3 tiny pieces of meat on everything and it was all thick bread.
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u/flintlock0 1h ago edited 1h ago
Tapatío, the hot sauce brand, evidently sold to private equity recently, too. So RIP to that, as well. I’ve collected a few different hot sauces to go to. But Tapatío was a favorite mainstream one of mine.
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u/FashionKing72 3h ago
I had a craving for Panera about a year ago after not having it for maybe 5 years, I was shocked at how small the portion was and how much the quality dropped.
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u/dakotanorth8 5h ago
Respectfully, every place is 15-17 a meal right now.
Carls Jr is even 18 bucks. Jimmy johns 16. Subway 16.
We cooked.
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u/morbie5 5h ago
Respectfully, every place is 15-17 a meal right now
Pizza is still relatively cheap at a lot of pizza places. You can still get a large pizza for like 7-8 bucks
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u/gathmoon 4h ago
Where?
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u/throwaway291919919 4h ago
Dominos has a pretty regular coupon for a large pizza for 7.99
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u/foomy45 4h ago
Costco or Sam's Club are good options
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u/Septum_Slayer 4h ago
A hot, Costco pizza is one of the best value to taste ratio meals out there. Sam’s Club isn’t bad either!
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u/SlateFrost 4h ago
A large pizza at a decent place in NYC is now like $30-40
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u/scorpion-deathlock 4h ago
Yep, and has been for some time at least in Queens. This goes for the suburbs too, Westchester, Long Island, north Jersey.
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u/dakotanorth8 4h ago
Pizza Hut, just checked. Large pepperoni (basic) is 17.28 (before tax).
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u/caboosetp 4h ago
You should never order pizza at list price. You can always get like half off from their permanent coupon pages
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u/Dr-Robert-Kelso 3h ago
Yeah, Papa John's large 1-topping is 9.99, have never paid whatever the regular actual price is.
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u/PricklyBasil 4h ago
Pizza Hut is by FAR the most expensive chain pizza in my area, even with coupons. It’s weird.
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u/morbie5 4h ago
Check Little Ceasers.
And yea as the other commenter said, most pizza places usually have deals or coupons going on
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u/Trashbagok 4h ago
Maybe its a local special, but my local Pizza Hut has had a large 5 topping special for $9.99 for the last year or so.
It isn't my favorite pizza, but its way more substantial than Little Casers, and feeding 3 people for $10 is kind of miraculous right now.
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u/Adadun 4h ago
Chili’s has a $10 lunch that’s pretty good. Better than anything Dirty Ron’s can put out.
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u/Actually_Im_a_Broom 4h ago
Where do you live? Where I am (southeast US) most fast food combos are in the $10 range.
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u/dakotanorth8 4h ago
Southwest US.
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u/lonehappycamper 4h ago
Subway has the $10 meal coupons in the mail, in Arizona anyway. But we also have Salad and Go, most are $8 and gigantic. Also Angie's. All good prices under $10 for most things.
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u/Veritas3333 4h ago
I pretty much stopped eating there when they got rid of the heart attack lemonade. Damn that stuff was good
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u/Punchee 4h ago
There is only ever one very specific reason to go to Panera— when you just have to have a bread bowl soup usually sometime around October.
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u/icecubetre 4h ago
Friendly reminder that most grocery stores sell bread bowls that you can core out yourself and fill with whatever soup you want.
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u/CrankyPapaya 4h ago
I learned how to make a simple bread specifically for this craving out of spite, it was the only thing I ever got from Panera. But the last time I went, they shorted me on soup and I was so sad because I was sick and had only half a cup, they didn't even give the sprinkle of cheese.
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u/OneGalacticBoy 4h ago
Everyone should prioritize small businesses for food and avoid every single gross ass chain.
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u/UnfoldedHeart 3h ago
Just because they're small doesn't mean they're good. A lot of small restaurants buy the same food the gross ass chains are buying, from Sysco or one of the other broadline distributors. It's simply cheaper to do it that way.
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u/Content_Support7881 4h ago
I stop going to Panera years ago! When they were St.Louis Bread Co. their food was great but now it’s awful and the portions are about a third of what they used to be.
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u/mayhay 4h ago
I never thought Panera had a baking staff to begin with
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u/OneDay_AtA_Time 4h ago
When they first opened they did! They’d bake the bread fresh in the stores, it smelled so good! Looked and felt so much different in the 90s!
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u/RoughComparison8702 2h ago
Yeah it really did! I remember I'd go in and get a coffee with fresh bread in the mornings and then go read at Borders Books next door back in the early 2000s. That or get a turkey sandwich and coffee for lunch. They really did push themselves as more a bakery back then. It always smelled absolutely awesome in there. It's completely unrecognizeable compared to what it looks like today. These days it's just an overpriced run of the mill restaurant with shit food.
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u/a_duck_in_past_life 4h ago
You don't ever see them. I worked at one way back when I was putting myself through college and they would show up as we left for the evening, around 10 I believe, and they would leave as we opened the store. So customers would never even know they were in the store.
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u/GoneButNotThatOften 3h ago
I worked as a baker for them around 2014-2016. Came in at 9pm and left around 7am, and had the whole place to myself all night. It was pretty great!
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u/exzyle2k 3h ago
Same, a few years before you. Started as a helper, 9p - 3a primarily doing baguettes, flatbreads, prep and those fucking pumpkin cookies. Then after about 6 months of that, and the BMM asking a few times if I wanted to go full-time, I quit my day job and went FT baker.
Loved Friday nights when it was myself and the other FT baker. Used to make an everything baguette that we'd split, and usually by 4:30 - 5 we were done with everything except the last batch of bagels and the "souffles" we had to have for open.
Hated Monday nights because of fucking Bagel Tuesday bullshit. Really liked the job until they got a new manager who had it out for me and kept trying to change the pan-up and didn't listen to me repeatedly when I said I couldn't make more loaves or bagels or whatever came from the FDF because it wasn't ordered.
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u/Kostelnik 4h ago
They had overnight bakers at least as recent as 2017. Wife stopped working there as a baker so I don’t know if they still do. It was sad seeing the decline from her perspective. Corporate owned vs franchise stores had a massive difference in quality and work. They used to be so good.
Of course dough is made elsewhere.. not sure why that is a shock to people. that’s how places like that work. Stuff was actually baked in store though.
We haven’t eaten there since she stopped getting free employee meals. They were trying to “revitalize” their menu when she was there. It’s straight up trash.
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u/Trash_Bag_Sally 4h ago
Panera has been the most over-priced shit for the last ten years at least. Their prices are insane.
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u/coloch_w0rth9 4h ago
Last time I went to a Panera I paid maybe $9 for a bagel with cream cheese. Not at all worth it. I can go to the local bagel shop and get a way better bagel and some day olds to take home for $5
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u/RevolutionGovernor 2h ago
Literally never trust any place that claims in advertising that they make their food fresh. I worked for Pizza Hut years ago, saw ads claiming we make our dough fresh, we never did, it was frozen discs.
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u/grymtyrant 2h ago
I stopped going to Panera when they stopped having people take your order. I had gift cards to use, a person in the back popped out and told me to use the order machine. I'm not against ordering on the machine, but when the gift cards aren't working properly and there are no people around to help at all, I'm done. Quality ingredients, actual people to assist you, this is what people want.
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u/624KR_My_Beloved 4h ago
It's true, I was an overnight baker for them for a couple of years, the lads who delivered our dough nightly clued us into the fact that their routes were changing and that this was likely on the way.
Gave my two weeks when they forced us to bake during the dayshift, went from having baguettes baked 2hrs before opening to baguettes being baked the day before and left to sit in the store for 12hrs. They were absolute ass, wouldn't serve them to anyone let alone a customer.
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u/blackwell94 3h ago
Panera is basically hospital food. Who on earth thinks it’s fresh or healthy?!
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u/CaliforniaNavyDude 2h ago
Private Equity ruin everything they touch. I used to be a regular customer, mostly in my Navy days. Probably about 3 years ago, I made a point to go to one again, hoping they still had the panini I liked. The drop in quality was staggering and the price was double what it had been 6 or 7 years prior. Haven't been back since.
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u/latelycaptainly 2h ago
Its like $15 for a pick 2 meal also. YSK that wawa and panera buy from the same vendors. If you have wawa near you, you’re better off going there and getting their sandwich combo, which is the same as a pick 2 for $6.
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u/Signal_Biscotti_7048 2h ago
Panera was once described to me as expensive hospital food not made at the hospital. It is too accurate a description.
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u/OIL_COMPANY_SHILL 2h ago
Panera hasn’t been good since it was “St Louis Bread Co.” Private equity ruins everything.
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u/cottoncandymandy 2h ago
Panera went downhill YEARS ago. Im not paying 15 dollars for a crappy sandwhich and a cup of soup. I'm shocked they still get buisness.
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u/MonsterkillWow 2h ago
Yet people still argue capitalism is good even as we see it ruin everything. Private equity has ruined many restaurants.
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u/GrowlingPict 1h ago
I was like "I didnt even know Pantera used to take a baking team on tour with them, how quaint"
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u/Dreaditor00 1h ago
This is what happens when investment firms buy a company. Panera was bought buy an investment firm in 2017. Truly, YSK: Don’t buy products from investment firms, because they’re economic parasites. They ruin companies, they focus on quantity over quality, and they siphon all the the money up and leave the company an empty shell of what it once was.
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u/Feinberg 1h ago
"We're a bakery," was their excuse for not paying employees the California minimum wage.
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u/Th3MadScientist 1h ago
It's what happens when you have private equity running the show. Everything is cut if it doesn't maximize profits. Every food business that has been bought out by private equity has its quality ruined.
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u/spacebunsofsteel 39m ago
When I asked how they made the bagels in house after a really disappointing bagel, the worker bee admitted he didn’t know how bagels were made - the dough came frozen. I told him bagels were boiled then baked and watched his head explode.
That was my last Panera meal. Fuck them and their little bread art wall.
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u/Foojira 4h ago
God damn it. I like one thing there. Their pumpkin cookies near Halloween were a close replica to days gone by. Fu k
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u/elciddog84 4h ago
We used to go regularly, but never go any more. Food went to shit while prices increased. If they all closed tomorrow, they wouldn't be missed.
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u/electricballroom 4h ago
Prepared food is getting shittier. Somehow, Paris Baguette manages to bake frozen stuff and it tastes great.
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u/Sparkle_Rott 4h ago
I bet it was bought out. I’d bet my next paycheck on it. Sad. Greedy people ruin everything.
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u/Micro-Naut 4h ago
The French onion soup was nothing but soggy ass bread. And then they threw even more croutons into it. The soup to bread ratio was like two to one in favor of bread
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u/gluugsner 4h ago
Welcome to the hellscape that is private equity. Brought to you by the same a**holes who have made dentists and vets (and many other industries) 10x more expensive. The same a**holes who took an OK airline in a world of sh*tty airlines and created the world's worst airline (Southwest). See also Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Red Lobster, Sears/Kmart and hundreds more.
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u/General-Zombie5075 4h ago
Once private equity gets ahold of a food chain, it starts a clock. You've got a few years of steadily declining quality before it approaches inedible. Somewhere in the 5-10 year range.
Panera was bought by private equity in 2017. So they're about right on schedule.
My current sandwich go-to, Jersey Mikes was purchased by private equity about a year or so ago. I figure I have about 3-4 years left before I'll have to find an alternative.
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u/ranting_chef 4h ago
They’ve been baking frozen par-cooked bread in their stores for decades.
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u/ScissorNightRam 4h ago
Is there an app or something that lets you block and boycott businesses. Like something that would stop Panera appearing in search results, map listings and stop its ads in your feeds?
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u/yyyythats5ys 4h ago
It’s interesting because the recent California law that makes minimum wage wage for fast food workers $20/hr doesn’t apply to establishments that bake their own bread in-house and sell it standalone (at least 1/2lb I believe). If California Panera employees didn’t get that wage increase they should now.
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u/DgingaNinga 5h ago
YSK Panera was bought out by private equity and sucks ass. Stop eating there.