Panera Bread — Restaurant in Auburn

I work on campus so I order coffee/drinks and pastries regularly here with the Sip Club. As long as I time my order to be outside the main rush hours, it's fine. The Sip Club is really useful for those of us who want daily coffee without the hefty price tag, since after 4 cups, it's essentially free the rest of the month. The pickup is usually on-time, within ten minutes of ordering. I have only had them mess up my order once, and it was a minor issue of a breakfast sandwich being on brioche instead of ciabatta. Not the end of the world.

The problem is when you try to order anything between like 10:45/11ish and 1:30ish. The wait is always 1+ hours long. Once I wanted to go for lunch here with my colleague, and I had to have them cancel my order because after 45 minutes of waiting (I placed the order 15 min before we over there too) it still was not ready and I had to go back to work. To their credit, they canceled the order easily and my charge was refunded. My colleague also left, went to run an errand, came back and her food was only ready nearly 90 minutes after the initial order. They should either have (MANY) more workers during the rush lunch hours or turn off mobile ordering so that you can only order in person and thus the workers can keep up with the amount of orders better. However, they don't even have a person taking in-person orders at any time, even during slow ones. You either have to order on the app or through the kiosk. Every regular Panera I've been in, including the other one here in Auburn, has at least one person working...

In two years of being in Auburn, I've never heard anything good about this location, but I needed a quick snack so I decided to finally give it a try. Here's what I discovered.

First of all, just like Hey Day market across the street, they don't accept cash--which was my intended method of payment. Secondly, it's online orders only--which as a newcomer, you don't find out about until you walk to the counter. So your first human interaction with a Panera Bread employee is disappointment and rejection.

Before you even get to order, there's that weird post-covid vibe where you walk into a crowded restaurant lobby that has no food in sight and everyone is sitting around staring at their phones. But I guess we're supposed to accept this as the new normal.

Another problem is that they were out of multiple items. Understandable. It happens. The key factor is how management handles this situation. Instead of putting a sign out or making an announcement to the hungry humans sitting in the lobby, they waited for each customer to come up one-by-one and ask why their item was missing from the bag. This is carelessness at best, or blatant disregard for the customer's time and needs at worst. There is no excuse for this.

Why is it that Chik-Fil-A and other neighboring restaurants can get it so right while this Panera gets it so wrong for so long?

Attention Auburn students: If you calmly boycotted this store for 5 business days in a row, I bet they would get their act together quick fast in a hurry. Very easy solution to implement for...

I love Panera. I tend to visit one in every city I go to because I can typically expect the same service, same food, same value. That is not the case here. Every review that says “hit or miss” is accurate. Sometimes I have a wonderful experience where my food is exactly as I ordered it. Others the order is so wrong I wonder what exactly they were thinking. For example; I ordered a bacon turkey bravo sandwich, requested extra signature sauce, with a large drink. Not only was my sandwich completely void of sauce, but I was also given a regular size drink when I paid for a large. I went to stand at the front to request it be corrected and no one even stepped foot up front for at least 10 minutes. Finally decided to just leave. Gave them a second chance today, ordered a BBQ chicken sandwich. They packaged my whole sandwich in 2 separate containers which ended up not surprising me since they both featured 2 different kinds of chicken and one was missing the onions. Really not worth the hassle, definitely not worth $15 to risk not even getting what you ask for. Only reason I gave 2 stars is because when it is...