Panera Bread — Restaurant in Durham

1/24/2025 UPDATE Not sure what is going on at this location. I have been coming here for 10 plus years and i noticed a decline in customers. The bagels have been dissappointing. They are days old and hard as a rock. Customer service is top notch! Always friendly but the quality has declined.

This morning i received very poor customer service from this location after being a customer for at least 5 years or more. The customer service at this location used to be outstanding. However, the last few months it's been very disappointing to say the least. This morning I walked in and was totally ignored by the actually manager. She was finishing up with a customer who is a regular like myself. As I approached the counter she proceeds to walk away with the other customer giggling and talking. She made eye contact with me but kept walking. Another associate was standing around drinking a drink. Some one comes out of the kitchen and said did they just leave you hanging? My response was "yes, they did". The manager magically disappeared when I looked around. The associate stated it's slow. Not sure what that meant. The customer experience is less to be desired here. No one greets you with a good morning and the manager this morning was down right rude for just leaving another customer without even acknowledging me standing there! I wrote a post earlier but somehow disappeared. Someone needs to train the manager on providing exceptional customer . This morning experience sure...

Normally I don't like to put reviews out there that just trash on a place, but I have to make an exception here.

Panera moved from its old location/building to this one recently, and it is both extremely disheartening and depressing, and so emblematic of Panera's ownership and the direction they are moving in. The old Panera store, even though it's a chain, was so clearly designed with comfort and function in mind, with nooks, long tables, private areas, public areas, etc. The new one may as well be a drive-thru with a lobby if you need an uncomfortable (both physically and socially) place to sit for an hour. There is no universe in which someone designed this store with customer satisfaction in mind, period.

I really only stopped by here because they're doing a 3-months of free Sip Club promo. I don't even know if it's worth stopping by for free coffee. This was such a wake-up call to me about what the value proposition of a coffee shop even is that I would rather now pay double to be in a normal, coffee-shop chair than drink free, decent coffee here.

The only nice things I can say are that the staff were doing their best and the new coffee machine, while not not as fun as the old carafe situation, produced fine coffee.

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Very few people hired at this Panera location actually care about providing good customer service and quality food. There are a few good gems here, but I’ve had numerous issues with this location, from entire items missing from pickup orders to deliveries never arriving.

Today, I had the absolute pleasure of eating the $3.39 I paid for a Madagascar vanilla almond cold brew because there was no coffee in the drink.

When I picked up in-café, I noticed the drink was significantly “whiter” than past orders, which was suspicious. When I pointed this out, the staff told me it’s because “we stirred it up.” Usually, even when there is milk in a coffee drink, it retains the brownish color of the coffee. That is, unless you absolutely dilute it with milk. The staff offered to remake the drink, but I refused, saying that if they say they put coffee in it, I believe them. I also didn’t want to open the opportunity to having my second drink tampered with.

I took a sip outside the restaurant — almond milk with vanilla syrup. I got gaslight into drinking sweet milk by a Panera staff. L O L

I don’t expect a Michelin-starred restaurant experience from a Panera, but good god, you could do the bare minimum — make the drink correctly, and don’t lie to...