Panera Bread — Restaurant in Charlotte

Words cannot even begin to fully and accurately explain how much this particular Panera location at 9321 JW Clay Blvd blows. I mean absolutely BLOWS! They never, I repeat NEVER have ANYTHING on their menu. Arriving here anytime after 3:00 pm and being foolish enough to attempt at successfully ordering any bakery items is an exercise in utter and abject futility. That is, if you are even able to place an order in the first place, as there have been several instances where you are met with a handwritten sign on the drive-thru speaker box that they will be or already have closed early for the day. What kind of business worth anything can continually fail at maintaining proper inventory levels is beyond me. It's not as though this is some mom and pop low level juncture. But instead this is a well established national restaurant. You wouldn't know it by the dismal way in which they continously disappoint their customers every single visit though. How hard is it to take notice of which items are the most requested. And as such, see to it that they are in plentiful stock by making sure to order/make enough of those items items to last throughout the entire day? And it definitely is a failure of the management at this location because the bakery at Concord Mills location is always well stocked and very rarely have I ever experienced a visit were they were out of popular items.

I so thoroughly miss the Bruegger's Bagels that used to be right around the corner next to the Jersey Mike's. They've been gone for a few years now and I wish they would return. They always had proper inventory, better tasting breakfast most importantly never continously disappointed their customer base the way this...

This Panera is horrible unless you like eating paper and getting your order correct on the 3rd try. I ordered 2 bagels, 1 coffee, 1 soda and a muffin to go at 10:30am on a Saturday. I walk to get my soda and the lady tells me they have no more bagels. I say "that's ok, let's start over" but her response was "it's only a few dollars difference" which struck me as odd as I hadn't offered any replacement suggestions yet. I say "let's do 2x bacon egg and cheese on croissants". I start to get my coffee and she tracks me down again and says "We don't have croissant". I say, "that's ok, how about ciabatta, and do you know when there will be any coffee put out on this Saturday morning"? She takes my cup and says she will bring me some. The coffee jugs are brought out and set up, I ask for my cup back and the she says she'll get it for me in just a second. They bring me my sandwiches on plates, I ask if they can have them wrapped up, and if they know where my coffee cup is, and if they know where my muffin is? I’m brought my coffee cup by the girl who took it and she tells me they set up coffee out here, I thank her for the update. I have everything but my muffin however the same lady throughout was kind enough to ignore me for only a minute before she stopped to ask what she can get me. Eventually I am home with my muffin, two sandwiches, coffee and soda, I take my first bite of my sandwich and the wax paper from the cheese was still in it. This Panera is horrible and it made me sad when it ruined...

The woman at the speaker was nice enough- the words she was saying were nice, her tone was otherwise. Whatever. The girl at the window, however, was hostile at best. She angrily announced my total, no greeting, not even eye contact, I told her I had a "My Panera" account to earn points for my purchase. She sighed, as though I'd just asked her to run around the block for me, asked "what's the number?", tapped her nails on the counter, loudly and impatiently, (at me or the computer I'm not sure), said nothing to verify if the account even popped up, repeated my total, took my card, and handed me my bag with my card. She never verified the order or any other normal fast food script. I think i heard a "mhm, you too" through all but gritted teeth after I wished her a good day. I got home and there wasn't even a spoon or napkin in the bag. Luckily, I'm just lazy, on my day off, and was getting lunch to bring home where I have spoons on hand. If I was going back to work or something, I'd have been pissed. Just do your job and stop treating customers like they're doing you a disservice by being a patron to the company you CHOSE to work for. This gets under my skin so badly. The food was great as always, luckily for me.

Edit: I just realized they also gave me bread instead of chips as my side. Not the end of the world, but just annoying. She repeated the order back correctly at the speaker- where was...