Panera Bread — Restaurant in Berkshire Township

Panera bread used to be my go-to fast food place in the early 2010’s. It was a treat for me and I always looked forward to it because there wasn’t one near where I lived at the time, so I would always make sure to stop by one wherever we traveled if they had one. Eventually, we moved to central Ohio and there were everywhere around here. However, I have noticed that the brand itself has continually gone down hill, unfortunately. Today was my last straw. I was sick and sent my husband to go get me a pick-two combo (soup and sandwich, + a cookie.) The bread that accompanied the soup was hard as a rock! Not fresh at all. Could not chew it even after dipping it into the soup. Secondly, the cookie was extremely hard too! I imagine Panera sold me last night’s left over. Joke’s on me because I’ve seen the steady decline of Panera restaurants (food quality going down, always forgetting items when picking up to-go order, having to use machine instead of human interactions, etc.) so today is my last straw and I am promising to myself that I won’t be going to any Panera franchise ever again. Lastly, I’m a high school teacher and over the years, I’ve had numerous students work at various Panera bread franchises. Several of them have reported that they themselves would not eat there, and that the kitchen and food storage areas were less than stellar. They’ve always indicated that the majority of the food isn’t fresh and refrigerated garbage. I have not witnessed that first hand but this is what I have been told. In other words, stay away from Panera bread as a whole....

Below is the poor response from the assistant manager. I tried calling the corporate office but no one cared enough to call me back.

"We got your complaint and I do apologize that your order was not accurate. A few things that we as a Panera CANNOT DO. 1. We are NOT allowed to open any cream cheese and put it on anything even though it was requested. It is a major health violation and we can be sited for it, especially if an auditor were to see that. I get that maybe another Panera store that you have visited may have done this for you, but we will not do this at our location. I do apologize for that. The steak and white cheddar sandwich is a heated sandwich. Now if you had requested it not to be toasted, it was not in our instructions for it not to be toasted. We have to put it in the turbo chef if it calls for it to be on the correct setting, which it was.

As far as the staff NOT being personable. I do apologize for that. We sometimes get in a zone especially when we have more than a few orders on the screen, but that does not make it ok not to say hi or thank you to everyone that comes up to the counter.

I am more than happy to give you a refund for what your ordered since it did not meet your expectations OR we would be willing to make another sandwich to your liking. Either one or the...

Had a very horrible experience. I ordered for a chicken avocado melt sandwich and the sandwich I received was not supposed to have bacon in it. The one I received had bacon and I don’t eat bacon for religious reasons. I got this in the drive thru and the moment I opened the sandwich I knew it had bacon and I brought it inside. The manager asked his store associate to NOT make a replacement and asked me to place a new order. I asked her if I can talk to him since the sandwich is full and I just received 2 mins back. The store associate clarified that the chicken avocado melt and some other melt sandwich has similar code and that could’ve been the issue. The manager came to me, spoke rude and said that’s the right sandwich and grabbed the sandwich and threw it in the trash can in front of me. I asked why should I pay again since you made the wrong order. He was very rude and didn’t bother to apologize and made a new order and this time it was the right sandwich. I’m surprised that Panera has such rude staff and they never value their customers religious beliefs. Never again I’m going back to this store. I’m regular to this store and never faced such a bad experience. Even the customers behind me had the courtesy to say sorry. None of the staff apologized and I’m very upset with...