Panera Bread — Restaurant in Los Angeles

This is a nice place to spend some time, meet with someone or get work done—nice ambience and not too loud. But something weird has been going on with the food for the last couple of months or so. Nearly every order I place here comes out wrong. If it’s just a single pastry, it’s fine... but pastas sandwiches come out with half the ingredients missing or switched out for something else. It’s started to be almost funny to lift the wrong bread to find the right meat for the sandwich I ordered, but absolutely no other ingredients. Just some meat on the wrong type of bread. The most common missing ingredient seems to be cilantro—anything that’s supposed to come with cilantro will absolutely never be served with cilantro. Drinks are also hard to come by—a pick-up order that includes a drink is almost as likely to have no cup as no cilantro. It’s a close battle. The most recent baffling mix-up was a Baja Mac & Cheese with no modifications at all. That was the only item in the order. Instead, I received a mac & cheese with an alarming amount of bacon on top and nothing else. These orders wherein maybe 20-30% of the elements are correct and the rest either missing or substituted with something else have happened to me at least 5 times now. On two of these occasions I was offered a free pastry as an apology, but the rest of the time I just get confusion, and a little extra wait time while someone remakes the order. The corner of my mind that occasionally entertains wild conspiracy theories sometimes asks whether it’s personal. Does someone here just really want to cause me mild inconvenience? But that only seems as likely as the theory that someone putting together these orders just really hates cilantro and will not touch the stuff under any circumstances. Not impossible, but also not probable. It’s a shame because the building itself is very nice, and close to my workplace. And I’m not a very picky person, either. If I were, I wouldn’t have continued returning to a business that has gotten my order wrong this many times. But for the prices, I’m not really inclined to come here anymore. At least not for a while—maybe this is just one very confused employee, and everything will go back to normal once that person has moved on. Who knows. But I feel fairly confident that as it stands, anything more complicated than putting a pastry in a bag is not going to be right on...

This was my first and last visit at a Panera location. I ordered a smokehouse chicken sandwich and placed my order at the kiosk. When I first entered I heard an unenthusiastic "welcome in" from a team member, but it was still nice to be acknowledged. After I ordered, I asked a lady, that may have been a manager, where do I get my drink cup since I ordered at the kiosk. She pointed to the other side of the restaurant and said "down there" She gave me a look like I was some kind of idiot and made feel like one. I still didn't know where she was talking about until I was called to get my food. The sandwich was extremely bland and the chicken, at first bite, was lukewarm. When I got to the middle, it was ice cold, like straight from the refrigerator cold. It was a Sunday around 1, so I thought it would be busy, but it was dead and now I see why. The restaurant was very nice and clean. I'll give them that.

If you want to increase sales and do good business, you have to make people feel welcomed, not make them feel like an unwelcome idiot. Guests don't go to places just for that place, they mostly go for the people that they build a connection with, people they enjoy seeing, people that make them feel welcomed and appreciated for coming there. That was definitely not the...

I would've given a 2 star or even 1 if I hadn't met the Manager. The guy was so exceptional that I must give 5 stars.

I went there for lunch after a business meeting. No one bothered to take my orders even when they saw me waiting. All the servers were talking to each other. Then someone showed up grumpy. After I paid for the order, I asked if I had the birthday treat since my birthday was two days earlier. The grumpy face with grumpy voice said no since I didn't come to the store on my birthday. I was out of town and also before I'd get it in the same month. I didn't say anything and moved to the dining area to eat. When I finished and was about to take my dirty dishes to the trash, I was approached by the Manager who offered to take dishes. I mentioned about the birthday treat. He went to the pastry area and gave me one with a smile. That smile is customer service. If I ever come back to Studio City, I'll definitely go there simply because of the customer service provided by...