Panera Bread — Restaurant in Knoxville

Panera has always been one of my favorite bagel-and-coffee morning places, and a nice soup-and sandwich shop too. The little shop on Broadway is nice, airy, fresh, and the coffee is good and hot.

I deduct one star for location. You take your very life in your hands getting in and out of the tiny parking lot of the little strip mall in which this Panera sits. Visibility is poor, but this doesn't seem to dissuade the (apparently) paranormally-gifted drivers, who barrel around blind corners without checking first to see if cars or pedestrian might be approaching from the other direction. Apparently, these drivers labor under the delusion they possess a sixth sense enabling them to see through time and around solid objects. I can assure them that empirical data has proven otherwise.

To further enhance your whimsical Adventures​ in Dining, this patch of Broadway--like the Winchester House, where the sound of hammers never ceases-- is forever under construction, a state of affairs that only adds to the murky visibility. Just the other morning, on my way to a clandestine assignation with a cinnamon crunch bagel and a steamy mug of hot and dark Brazilian, I was almost beheaded by a backhoe and disemboweled by a forklift. But as my uncle, Commander Thadeus Saint Germain (late of the Algerian fusiliers) always opined, nothing whets the edge of your appetite like a near...

The Fountain City, TN Panera Bread is the worst Panera I have been to in the country! I go there when I visit family in the area and it has been notoriously terrible for years...clearly because of a manager that seems to delight in making the experience as unpleasant as possible for customers. Yesterday the water for the hot tea was almost empty and Luke warm. I had to put it in the microwave to get it hot. The iced tea dispenser was almost empty and had to be tilted to get it to dispense. The Apple chips in my Fuji Salad were crumbs. I asked for some extra chips and I got 3 small pieces. One person in our party got a full salad that was about a third of of bowl...looked like it would be about the size of a half salad. The half salad was about a quarter of a bowl...embarrassingly small. The chocolate chip cookies were hard and stale. The manager always seems unhappy if you ask for anything or have any problems. It honestly seems to make her day to be unaccomedating. It is a totally different experience from all other Paneras. It is so bad that everyone I go there with always dreads the encounter and we honestly wouldn't go at all except there are not a lot of other choices in the area. We keep hoping that it will get new management that values and...

Their food is usually great, but their customer service at this point is asinine. Yesterday, 9/17/17, I made a rapid pickup order online. I was charged $15.59 but never received an email confirmation. I went to the store to pick it up and they had never received the order. After driving back home to search for another confirmation or see if the transaction had a confirmation number, I called back and spoke to a manager. She searched for my order, but was unable to find it. We did something else for dinner. Today, 9/18/17, I called back as per instructions from the previous day, and spoke to another manager. The transaction was no longer pending, but had posted. She still couldn't find the order. Even after expressing my disappointment that I was never even offered a replacement order, I still was told to wait until Wednesday and, if the transaction (that I already stated was posted and even offered to bring my phone to show them) hadn't fallen off, bring a bank statement so they could send it to corporate.

The least they could have done was to offer to make our order. Even if the transaction fell off for some reason, they wouldn't have...