Panera Bread — Restaurant in Downers Grove

This may be the worst Panera on the face of the planet. I like Panera but for some reason everyone here seems to work at a crazy pace of slowness. There's times when I want to go into the bathroom and look myself in the mirror and punch myself in the eye.

It does not matter who's working the register they're always the most impolite individuals.

What's really awesome is when there's someone that orders about 60 things and the person taking orders is the one that has to go and get all those things rather than having someone run for those things or they just simply handle the register.

The line that formed behind me had 16 people in it. 16 people wrap your head around that. The reason because the person knew the person that was ordering the bagels and they decided to talk about what they did last Sunday.

The solution would seem easy right just simply go to another Panera. Well there is nothing closer. Everyday I beg my coworkers to eat somewhere else but nope everybody settles on this and it usually creates a situation where our whole day is set back one full hour.

It is literally easier and quicker to go to a grocery store buy eggs drive home and cook them cuz I can do that in the same amount of time it takes for me to get my food here.

I would seriously consider training or retraining the staff as a whole.

Update: there was one person in front of me. I walked in at 8:05am, I am still waiting for three sandwiches. It's...

My father-in-law passed away and we had to quickly come up with a plan to feed a large group of people who would be coming to our home after the funeral. I ordered catering online from the Wheaton Store around 9pm on Thursday evening for a Saturday 11:15am pickup. I received a confirmation email upon my order and another confirmation email at 8am the next morning (Friday). After hours at the visitation on Friday, I received a 5:30pm call from the Downers Grove store explaining that they do the catering and don’t have a driver on the weekend who can take the order to Wheaton. They asked if I could pick it up in Downers instead. No, that was not possible and here I am on a Friday night with about 18 hours until guests were scheduled to be at my home (following the funeral and burial). Why didn’t they call sooner? Why did I receive TWO confirmation emails? Instead, we had to panic to find another restaurant that could serve our needs in a very short to frame. This was stress we did not need while mourning our loss. The person who called me was not to blame. The manager at the Downers Grove store FAILED their job. They failed by having an employee call instead of calling themselves and for calling so late. I highly recommend Portillo’s catering. They were incredibly kind, had everything ready, and did it all on short notice. I’ll never...

I came to this location a couple times in the past for a prepaid pickup order (just bagels) and they never had it ready on time. One time they were all standing around talking and I had to literally interrupt them to ask where my order was, so I got an attitude from them LOL OK! I decided it was easier to go elsewhere. Well, I apparently forgot the bad experiences a year later and placed an order online and prepaid. It was ready on time, but the bag was sealed with tape. When I opened it after I got home, there were like 10 cinnamon bagels (I ordered chocolate chip) and I despise cinnamon. There was nothing on the bag or receipt indicating the substitution. So, I drove back and told them, assuming I just got the wrong order or something. The guy was super rude and said "ummmm so the problem was, we didn't have any chocolate chip bagels." What? First, why didn't anyone NOTIFY me of this so I could just cancel it? Second, who does that? When I order and pay for something, I expect I'll get what I ordered... not whatever you decide to toss in the bag! I'm...