Panera Bread — Restaurant in Barrie

We ordered 3 sandwich combos for lunch today thinking that we will have a great, filling, delicious lunch as we have had in the past. We ordered online with rapid pickup. Received the email that it is ready for pickup , arrived 4 minutes later and nothing was there, directed to another area and waited for someone to look up and ask if I needed assistance for 12 minutes. They were busy and I can be very patient but the lineup behind me was growing so I asked a man there if he could help. He did , handed me the bag of food I ordered and I actually watched being made. Obviously it wasn't ready when the email came through saying that it was. We brought the food home and started to unpack. The soup and mac n cheese was luke warm probably from sitting on the counter and not on the rapid pickup shelf as per instructions.The sandwiches were nothing but pathetic. The pulled chicken was so small, the bbq sauce was missing, the chicken was so dry and thin you couldn't pierce it with a fingernail. I had to use bbq sauce and other filling from my fridge to make it edible. The bacon avocado melt had a teaspoon worth of filling in it, not enough to make the sandwich filling or edible. The buns they were on were so small, maybe the same size or a bit smaller than the baguette you get with the soup. What a huge waste of money, $51.79 to be precise. For what we paid for it I would have expected better quality. 2 of the 3 sandwiches were subpar, certainly not up to the standards that we had known in the past. Instead of feeling satisfied and full I ended up frustrated, disappointed...

We try to order from this Panera for our office lunches, but notice I said “try” and not “do.” The online ordering system only works about a tenth of the time, which makes it nearly impossible to rely on. The Panera app is equally troublesome, constantly running into the same errors as the website.

While we could use UberEats, the extra fees make it cost-prohibitive for an office of 10+, so the Panera website/app are our only pickup options without hidden costs. Unfortunately, both are consistently unreliable, forcing us to order elsewhere most of the time.

Calling the restaurant is no help either—they often don’t answer, and when they do, they refuse to take phone orders. This is the only place I know of that won’t take an order over the phone. Ordering in person isn’t an option for a large office order either, since it would mean one person waiting around during their entire lunch break.

And on the rare occasions when we do get our order, it’s missing items—and staff show no concern or effort to fix it.

Bottom line: unreliable website, app, and service make this location far more trouble...

Prices are way to high for what you get....

Also, yesterday my Girlfriend and I went in and had an odd interaction with a cashier (younger, short brownish hair, furthest right cash close to the cookies, around lunch time) to which she asked if we were "together"..when we responded yes, but paying seperate..she responded with "what?..why isn't he paying then? what a bum"....my girlfriend and I frowned and then proceeded on. She went on to say to me later "I'm sure your not a bum".....I'm sure she was making a joke (maybe) but that is such poor taste, she has no idea what my lady and I decided on OR what our current situation / preference is. It came of as a poor "joke" filled gender stereo types. I said "it's all good"...and it is, but people need to think before they speak especially when it comes to what they think traditional gender "rolls" or expectations are. Views that were probably learned on Instagram or tik tok these days.

a little thought into this would go along way.... people don't need to be belittled while...