I got this after completing a post purchase survey and making a complaint in the comment. My issue is I don't get those sip club Saturday offers, and never have in the 4 weeks since subbing.

Last week I made a direct customer service complaint about this and got a $5 credit.

I'm sure this isn't everyone's experience, but it is a possibility. Or maybe they are just getting worried about survival and still have hope.

Hi all, does anyone know what kind of almonds are used in the farmhouse salad? I’ve recently gotten very obsessed with them and would love to have them at home.

I lucked out tonight. This is a cup of soup and it’s filled to the top instead of only half and I got a decent size baguette. The soup was hot and not too thick. Not pictured is a large iced tea and a chocolate croissant. My total was $7.48 with my sip club and I used points for a free pastry.

It’s weird! It’s uncomfortable! And it’s weird! 💀💀💀

Let me describe the average experience of being a Panera Sip Club member trying to pick up a drink through the drive-thru.

I open the app, claim my Sip Club drink, and place the order a few minutes before arriving. This isn't a complicated order. It's an iced tea, lemonade, or some other beverage that requires approximately the same amount of effort as watering a houseplant. No food. No modifications. No requests. No "extra this, hold that." It's already ordered, already paid for in the case of Sip Club since it costs exactly $0.00 at pickup.

Then I arrive.

There are a few cars in the drive-thru, but nobody is actually at the window. Perfect. My order already exists, my drink is probably already made, and I can see employees moving around inside. Naturally, I pull up to the window.

This is where the ritual begins.

Instead of simply handing me the drink, I get told I needed to stop at the speaker first.

"That's so we know you're here."

Which is interesting because at this exact moment I'm six feet away, staring through the window. We are making eye contact. I know I'm here. You know I'm here. The tea knows I'm here. At this point, the speaker isn't providing critical intelligence. My location has been discovered.

The reason I skip the speaker is because I've spent enough time trapped behind people treating the drive-thru menu like they're preparing for the bar exam.

Someone pulls up ten feet before the menu board and begins a deep period of reflection. Several minutes pass. They're studying the menu as if Panera released a brand-new cuisine overnight and they need to evaluate every option before proceeding.

Eventually they reach the microphone.

Then negotiations begin.

• "What's on that sandwich?"
• "Can I substitute this?"
• "What soups do you have?"
• "Does that come with chips?"
• "No tomatoes."
• "Actually, light tomatoes."
• "Wait, let me ask my husband."

At some point I expect legal counsel to be involved.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there waiting for a prepaid iced tea that required no discussion, no customization, and no employee consultation beyond locating a cup and operating a drink dispenser.

By the time I reach the window, I've sometimes spent 15 to 20 minutes waiting for what is essentially flavored water.

Which brings me to the obvious question:

Why is it called Rapid Pick-Up?

What exactly is rapid about it?

The line isn't rapid. The pickup isn't rapid. The only thing moving quickly is my anger.

And why not have two pickup windows? One for mobile orders, Sip Club drinks, and simple transactions, and another for people ordering lunch for an entire office while conducting a live sandwich negotiation.

Right now, the system treats "I'd like my prepaid lemonade" the same as "I'd like seven sandwiches, four substitutions, three allergies, two soups, and can you explain the difference between every bagel."

Then whenever someone points out how absurd this is, somebody inevitably says:

"Just go inside."

Ah yes. The perfect solution.

The drive-thru is slow, so don't use the drive-thru.

The Rapid Pick-Up lane isn't rapid, so don't use the Rapid Pick-Up lane.

Brilliant.

The point isn't that other options exist. The point is that when you call something Rapid Pick-Up, customers shouldn't need to abandon that option to experience anything remotely rapid.

TL;DR:

Panera's "Rapid Pick-Up" drive-thru often isn't rapid at all. I order a simple prepaid drink before arriving, yet still get stuck behind customers placing large, customized orders and then get lectured for pulling directly to an empty pickup window instead of stopping at the speaker first. If my order is already in the system and the window is open, the process feels unnecessarily inefficient. At that point, calling it "Rapid Pick-Up" seems misleading when getting a pre-ordered drink can still take 15-20 minutes. The issue isn't that there are alternatives like going inside, it's that the supposedly fastest option frequently isn't fast.

What is your favorite coffee order/customization? I have the sip club, so I’m looking to find my new coffee order!

I’m a former employee who worked at Panera for a little over a year while I was in high school. I worked through COVID and noticed that a lot of the food service practices started to decline. We used to have a church come pick up our leftover bakery items and bread, but during COVID, they only showed up a couple of times a week. We also started making fewer fresh baked goods, so we’d run out of certain items more often.

One time, my manager was out of an item that had already been sold, so she went through the bags of bread to find what she needed. Eventually, this became a habit. Whenever we ran out of something, they’d resort to using day old bread that had been sitting in the back all day.

The bagels were even worse. At the end of the night, I was expected to throw all the leftover bagels into one bag. So if someone ordered a cinnamon crunch bagel, it could come out covered in sesame seeds, everything seasoning, and whatever else had been mixed in.
This was years ago, and I know things may have changed since then, but I’m curious if anyone else’s store did this too. Is this still happening? 👀

So I ordered at the kiosk, and the "give us feedback" screen came up. And I really wanted to give feedback about my favorite behind the counter person. He always greets me by name, I get my coffee in a mug not a paper cup, like I like, and sometimes when I am sad in the morning he makes my day.

Instead of a thing to type in there was a QR code. Great way to get people to give feedback. People love to scan in a QR code and open an app to give feedback.

Anyway, I did so, because Jeremiah is really an asset to the store and I wanted to let management know. And the questions - three of them, were all about "My experience with the new kiosks" and then an open ended question "what's the one thing you would like to share with us about the new kiosks?"

There was no place to give feedback about anything else about the store. What the hell? I wanted to give feedback about an employee, and I was not able to.

And no, I'm not going to poke around the website and all that. I just came to get coffee and an overpriced bit of carbs.

I LOVED the pumpkin muffins so much and I'm so sad that they discontinued them because they were actually one of my favorite foods and if anyone has the recipe PLEASE I NEED IT. or like a close copycat because I have tried and none of them are that good.

Don’t mind my child’s sandwich eating skills. This shows a very small diameter sausage patty on their bagel sandwich.

Is it too much to expect a sandwich that’s neatly assembled and actually holds together? I recently picked one up at Panera in Gainesville, FL (Store #204152), and it was an unwieldy, sloppy mess. Has basic care and attention to food preparation become an afterthought?

Found out the store I'm trying to transfer to is a franchise store; excellent. Will my pay stay the same, even though it's not under the same franchisee? Moving from up North to FL, and parts of the plan hinge on me being able to keep similar pay but I have ways around those.

So I (23F) am a TL-MIC, been here for 5 and a half years. Right now for management it’s just me, one team manager, and our general manager, then we have a team manager who just started but is in training and won’t be off training until November 20. This will be my fourth week in a row hitting overtime, we are not supposed to but it’s almost impossible. I close 5 nights a week, no breaks. The GM opens 5 days a week, the team manager closes 2 nights and opens 3 days a week. No mid managers, obviously. We are currently in the trenches, with call outs as well.

Yesterday I my dish closer called out 5 minutes before his shift. I had to close dish on top of closing manager on Saturday as well but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. I came in at 2pm, a lot of stuff to do like dishes and baking stuff because the team manager always is in a hurry to leave after being on her phone all day in the office, not checking what bakery stuff or breads we’re low on, etc.

Anyway, later on my dish closer called out so we had 1 person taking drive thru orders until 7pm, then I have my cashier/dining closer, and my line closer. We had full screens after full screens, sales were very high, just insanely busy and the line area took a while to clean up because it was just chaotic. I had no time to keep up with dishes (there were dishes from day shift too) or start the PM bake, other than occasionally having to force myself to throw baguettes and bread bowls in or run utensils, cups and bowls through dish quickly. Then I had to let my cashier leave early since he’s a minor and can’t work past 11pm. I did the PM bake, manager stuff, finished stuff with cash, cleared out 3 very full sinks of dishes, did all the floors. I didn’t get out until 4:18am. But I clocked out at 12:56am. And now I’m at 37 hours but I close on Tuesday and have to do the inventory count, so I’ll likely get 43 or 44 hours this week (on the clock). My GM was aware of the high sales and the call out, but doesn’t know I was here this late and probably thinks I really left at 12:56, because he sent me a text at 6am asking where the closing email was but I honestly passed out when I got home. I usually only work an hour off the clock, it’s never gotten this bad.

This is not my article or anything. I just got curious about the early artwork from a recent post. From the article on early aesthetics:

> Anthony Coleman was the brand designer responsible 30+ years ago for bringing the vision of Panera Bread to life through design. He explained to writer Vince Dixon, the entire space was crafted meticulously with warm colors, evoking feelings of home and gathering. Their intention was for customers to feel as if they were at home.

>“We also recognized the customer was being challenged with a whole bunch of dynamics in the world: their job, politics, war, lots of things hitting them,” Coleman says, “and we wanted to come up with an environment that was a way of giving them a retreat.”

hey so i know ppl love panera or whatever but can people please start looking at what time we close because there is no reason for u to order two market bowls and 2 dippers 2 minutes before we close, genuinely how can people not feel bad like im a 18 year old girl working for minimum wage the least yall could do is not make it so i have to stay 20 minutes later because YOU cannot read or just don’t care. and also my coworker got yelled at in drive thru by the same person who came late because we didn’t have the cookie he wanted. maybe if u wanted it that bad come in before we close huh. my panera is all teenagers mostly minors and grown adults throwing tantrums over cookies at 8:59. okay rant is over just please be more considerate and i really hope the guy who came thru today sees this

Staying in a hotel with no food for 2 nights / 3 days and well there’s a drive thru Panera 100 feet from my room. Actually a pretty nice one, maybe it’s corporate?

Anyway $5 a month for 5 months, plus 500 points on my first order was enough to get me back. Even though there’s not a Panera within 10 miles of my house, at least I’m getting drinks and discounts right now. Which is more than I had when I got here.

Although I forgot how small the breakfast ciabatta looks. It’s like someone was trying to bake a 6” Subway loaf and ran out of dough. Oopsie

They say that higher ups watch this page, and I hope they DO. I’m an ex-employee from a Rochester store and now I can tell this story. One day 20 minutes into my shift, an old man collapsed of a heart attack and died in the middle of the dining room while his granddaughter screamed frantically for help and 911. She was crying hysterically, traumatized. It was lunch. He was bleeding from all his facial orifices while they applied the LUCAS device to his chest. Six EMS performed cpr before taking him into the ambulance to sit in the parking lot for a half hour. The whole staff of very young adults and teens were in tears and shaking. They made a crying teen boy clean it up afterwards. These assholes had a SIX hour long corporate meeting which is apparently how long it took to decide to remain open. I guess the overpriced money for shit food was worth it for a few more hours of precious cash. I walked out in the middle of my shift because I refused to force the kitchen to make drive thru orders while they were crying. I can still remember his little soda cup left sitting on the empty table. It still brings me to tears a year later. And yes, they still kept taking customers. I was furious. F*ck you panera.

For no apparent reason, and with no email to tell me, I see an offer in my app "Purchase required. Offer valid for 1 free whole entree. Max discount $18.95."

I loaded up a YP2 but found that wasn't valid with this offer. So is this limited to a single item? The most expensive thing on the menu is 11.99.

I just want to know WHO thought getting rid of the toasters and using the sandwich ovens to toast bagels was a good idea??? AND to have the bagel orders pop up on the sandwich screen when I already have a full screen of sandwiches? 💀 Electric chair.

I have been eating at Panera for a while now, back when they had the spinach artichoke soufflé I’m still mad they discontinued. Nevertheless…I just went there for a sandwich/salad combo and why in the world is half a sandwich almost $8 now? That used to either be the price of a whole sandwich or a dollar or two off from a whole sandwich. How can they sustain at these prices? At this point it’s cheaper to go to the grocery store and get ingredients to make them at home. Maybe it’s just me

Hello fellow panerians,

I have been apart of mother bread for a couple months now, at my location we have one designated caterer. However, he does not come in on the weekends leaving the orders to the line staff.

Yesterday he came to me while on my break and informed me of a massive order id have to work on that left a $120 tip. I was told I’d have to split it with a team lead of mine because she was going to help. She then came up to me yesterday and told me to my face she was going to do it all by herself the day before and started on the time she was supposed to clock out so she wouldn’t have to split the tip with me. She is usually the only one who helps the caterer with his orders and they split tips all the time. When I work on catering orders on the weekends, I am forced to split my tip with the line staff because they “helped”. I’ve been forced to split my tips for coworkers who did absolutely nothing but put the sandwiches in the turbochefs at the most whilst I balance making 30+ sandwiches, other orders, and opening at the same time.

I came in this morning and asked her what needs to be done and she wouldn’t tell me because she didn’t want to split the tip. She then came to me later and asked me to make sandwiches for the order??? I asked if I’d get my portion of the tip and she said no so I said no back.

This is truly infuriating, I could really use that tip and was willing to put in the work for it. She told me directly to my face that she didn’t want to split the tip with me. I felt disrespected. She gets multiple catering orders nearly everyday and makes hundreds of dollars from just the tips while I rarely work on catering orders and never have an opportunity to get a tip like this.

I’ve considered confronting the manager but already know he’d be biased judging on how he felt about me taking a muffin out of the donation box which was going to be thrown away after I watched him take a muffie out to give to the same person who swept my tip from under me.

What can I do in this situation? This isn’t the first time it’s happened and I know it won’t be the last.