Panera Bread — Restaurant in Louisville

I typically only post positive reviews, as I feel negative experiences are better handled privately and give the establishment a chance to improve. However, I repeatedly used the Panera platform to ask for the proprietor information and each time received a generic reply “thanking me for my feedback”, which I had not given. After over a week of attempts, here is my issue……

My daughter needed a place to study for college finals and chose this location due to the close proximity to home and the fact there was a Derby event (Thunder Over Louisville) happening downtown. She entered, placed her order for food and drink, and began to study. A woman who appeared to be the store manager (or at least the head supervisor for that shift) entered and loudly announced she “wasn’t doing $*#! today because we should be closed, but instead we got this” (she nodded her head towards my daughter who was clearly seated and planned to stay awhile. The other employees, along with this woman, continued varied conversations laced with profanity throughout the visit. At one point, an elderly gentleman entered and placed an order. He proceeded to go to the restroom while he waited and when he returned, he asked if the order packaged on the counter was his, to which an employee stated affirmatively that it was. He walked out and checked his order while on the sidewalk, realizing it was not what he had ordered. During this time, another employee realized he had taken the wrong order and loudly stated, “stupid a$$ grandpa took the wrong damn order”. He returned to the counter, was given the correct order, and told the employees to have a wonderful day, to which there was no response. My daughter ended up cutting her study session short, as she was made to feel very uncomfortable by staff the entire time she was there, as if she was simply loitering. In the future, we will drive twice as far to patronize the Breckenridge/Dutchman’s location, as the level of customer service is severely lacking at this location. The disrespect, profanity and mocking/name calling of paying customers is completely...

The food was good. Very expensive for what you get, but good food. The problem is the service. You order online which was easy, but there were no instructions. So when you pull up to the restaurant there are four signs up for parking spots. Two are designated for the Drive Thru to handle overflow from drive thru orders. The other two say Pick Up. So I pulled into one of those. Then I looked around. There were no instructions on the sign. Hardly any cars in the parking lot. Then I look online on my order and there are no instructions there either. So I wonder why the designated parking for pick up. I call the restuarant only to get a recording that was exhausting, so I hung up and walked in.

Once inside I saw probably 6-7 employees mainly standing around, talking and doing nothing. I stand there for about 30 seconds while these three are taking and not one of them break to ask if they can help me. Finally I interrupted them and said, excuse me but I have an order for pick up. One of the young ladies, who seemed out out that I interrupted her story, says the pick up orders are down there. There was my order. Then I asked, how do the pick up signs work outside. She said what signs? I said, the two that say pick up! She says oh those are for the Drive Thru. I said well two signs say Drive Thru and two say Pick Up. She just stared at me. I said, well thank you and walked out.

If I owned that store, I’d have a team huddle and fix the two misleading...

I went in to this store for a coffee and stood at the counter to order. No one ever came to take my order. There were several other people in the restaurant who were drinking coffee and chatting so I knew that someone was there to take orders. I noticed that there was a kiosk. I am not familiar enough with Panera Bread but was willing to give it a shot. This took me longer than expected and I was on a very short break. I just wanted coffee. I once again looked to the order counter for help and once again no one was there to help. By this point I was getting annoyed so I walked to the counter and asked in a loud voice if anyone was here to help. Just then, a lady who had been sitting down in the restaurant side table with a man walked up. She asked if she could help. I was perplexed and even more annoyed because she clearly looked at me when I came in and let me go through all those aggravating kiosk prompts instead of helping me out from the start. I have never heard of being paid to sit down with customers when you are working in a restaurant business. Perhaps this is the way restaurants do things now. I will be ordering my coffee from 7Brew...