Panera Bread — Restaurant in Gresham

This is primarily a review of this Panera location and the Panera breakfast experience I had. I know Panera in general is good. But it’s not often I leave a restaurant dissatisfied and desiring supplementary food—as if I never even ate—but this was the case after trying breakfast here recently.

I’m not a Panera regular. I’ve probably visited the restaurant less than five times in my life, and I’m certain their lunch and dinner options are delicious—albeit kinda expensive. But I think they need to reevaluate their breakfast menu.

When I walked in, I was glad to see they offered breakfast options, but upon review, I didn’t see many choices. A few sandwich options and a bunch of oatmeal. That’s okay. Maybe they just do a few things really well. I chose the bacon, egg, and cheese on brioche. It looked good. I also got a cookie and an iced coffee, but that’s it. I couldn’t figure out what else to pair this sandwich with and the person who took my order wasn’t interested in making suggestions. After stumbling around trying to figure out where the iced coffee was hiding, another employee nicely pointed it out to me. All Paneras seem to be organized in a very weird and unergonomic way that makes me question my observation skills and 20/15 vision.

Once I got my food I was greeted with something that looked pretty good, but once I bit into it, I realized it’s going to be pretty disappointing. There seemed to be one single slice of flavorless bacon right in the middle of the sandwich, layered in a bland cheese, and an undercooked over easy egg on top. I love eggs over easy, but usually you’re supposed to actually cook the whites. This one was clearly not done. You know a sandwich is bad when the bread is the best part.

I don’t know if this restaurant location was just having an off morning but maybe I just don’t go for breakfast there again for a while.

Oh, the chocolate chip cookie was delicious. The iced coffee left much to be desired. 3/5 because Panera is still generally good for food. Just a bad experience likely with...

Ive been recently turned on to Panera by family. It lives up to the aesthetic ambiance and the flavor, however there is one particularly consistent reason I am deciding to write a three star review: employee attitude. No one in particular; no particular instance or situation. My girlfriend and I typically order to-go in person. Each time we show up and are greeted timely by a smiling face to take our order. The problem occurs as we are sitting on the bench while our food is prepared. Each and every time we coincidentally become the unavoidable audience to the kitchens complaints about their management and their customers. With the configuration of this restaurant the takeout customers are seated face to face with the line cooks and their conversations can’t be missed or tuned out. They’re usually pretty loud and passionate (good!), but also blatantly unprofessional (not good...). Given that we usually ring up a bill of about $40, it’s hard to sit and listen to people complain about their work life while they make your food. I was hoping to leave this feedback directly with a manager but their contact page has been disabled according to their website. I would like to continue eating here as it is a nice treat in this pandemic riddled world of political unrest, but not if my orders truly make the employees as miserable as they say. I also only go there for dinner, which means towards the end of the day which could explain decline in morale. Either way, please be mindful of discussing internal problems, challenging customers, or your general sense of misery in front of your good...

Mom and I used to go here a lot, but the latest trip was very disappointing to the point where I doubt we'll go there again. This time right off we found that the prices were much higher than when I was last down in September 2018. They are no longer doing the $1 pastry with a food and coffee beverage purchase. I thought the pick-two used to mean a savings over the regular menu, but this time it was no different than buying each item individually. And, Mom felt the cashier should have mentioned it was cheaper to buy a whole sandwich when the order showed that we had each ordered the same half sandwich.

Other than that the staff was fairly pleasant. Then, while the food came quickly, there were a few problems with it. The rolls were stale, like day-old at least. The Asian sesame salad was kinda tasteless, except for a strong sweetness in the dressing; it really didn't taste Asian at all, never mind sesame. The avocados in the sandwich halves were way too green and hard to chew through. And Mom said her cranberry muffin was nice, but my chocolate chip cookie was also stale.

Finally, I would have given this review directly to Panera instead of spreading it on Google, but they didn't even have a comment section on their website. Overall, it was not a very...