Panera Bread — Restaurant in Los Gatos

I was part of a group that went to Panera for coffee after our meeting because it was convenient and we could always find a large table. I hadn’t been back since I left the group so I thought I’d give the place a try for lunch.

On the positive side, the service was great. The buzzer they gave me didn’t work when my food was ready, but an especially cheerful person came looking for me on the patio when I didn’t pick it up. The person who took my order was also very upbeat. And it was nice to see one of the workers spending lots of time spray-cleaning the tables… with a smile!

Unfortunately, I can’t say anything good about the food. I ordered their Signature Take Chicken Sandwich. It’s served on a brioche roll with a few spring greens, little parmesan-flavored crisps (which I skipped), and garlic aioli. You can pick one free side dish: either a little French baguette (an odd choice with a sandwich), an apple, or a small bag of chips. The brioche roll was fresh but the chicken was completely dried out. I think it had been sitting around for a while. It was also much smaller than the picture implied.

Even though the staff was excellent, the food was just ordinary. I’m not a big fan of large chain restaurants anyway, so I don’t have any compelling...

Went in on New Year's Eve with my family (2 adults and 3 kids) to order dinner around 6:40pm. We used the self service kiosk to order our food. We received our food in about 10 minutes. Shortly after receiving our food a woman came by and said that they will need to lock up early at 7pm since it's a holiday. Ummm we didn't get our food until 6:50pm and no one told us anything that they would close early when we were ordering our food. I wish someone would have told us as we rushed through eating everything in about 15 minutes. We left Panera bread at about 7:10pm and when I was leaving I told the woman that was locking the door thank you but she didn't reply and did not look happy.

I do have to say that the food was satisfactory and the woman that was preparing the food was very pleasant and had good customer service skills. However, as for the other woman telling us to hurry up and eat since she had to lock up early that wasn't a pleasant experience. She was basically rude. Never been rushed out of a restaurant before and basically being told you have about 15...

For about three months now I've been going into the Los Gatos Panera, conveniently located on my way to work and have asked several of the counter people for "two shots of espresso." No one has a problem with this except one (very nice and very helpful) employee who, every time, says something like "Okay, just let me make sure I know what you want. Our coffee drinks always take two shots, so by a two shots do you mean four shots?" I have told her repeated that a shot is a shot and by two shots I mean I want "two shots". We've already been though this at least five times and she knows I'm a regular, but she still keeps confusing the issue. I have since gone to two other Panera's and mentioned this and they don't understand why that employee keeps asking if by "two shots" I really mean "four shots." Maybe a store meeting explaining what "two shots" means would help.

This is my only complaint about any Panera. I love the food...