Panera Bread — Restaurant in Manassas

This Panera delivers to our house and has a reasonable delivery fee. That is the only reason this location has two stars. The food is can be fresh, but the quality of food, attention to detail, and quality of service are all increasingly disappointing. The following examples deal largely with our interactions with this Panera via ordering online. A couple months ago, I substituted the typical baguette side for a bag of chips- to take it to work the next day. It was not included with the order. I didn't bother calling about it, because with a baby and toddler- who has time for that? A couple weeks ago, I ordered a 'you pick two' and the sandwich was not delivered. I called and the management sent it to us and 'didn't charge us a second delivery fee'. I'm sorry, but I feel that the 'you pick two' (if not the entire order) should have been comped- considering I was planning to give most of that sandwich to my now 'starving' toddler who had to wait twenty-some extra minutes for dinner. Twenty-some minutes feels like an eternity when trying to distract a toddler while feeding a crying baby. On Friday night, we placed an order for Saturday morning, because we wanted to ensure we had the bagels and spreads we wanted to share with our friends for brunch. My husband arrived Saturday morning at the appointed time and they had sold all of a particular bagel (of which we had requested four)- rather than setting them aside, since we had technically ordered them prior to anyone else. He then was put on the spot to chose other bagels. He arrived home and we realized that Panera had not included all the bagels, though they charged us full price. Our friends were then arriving and we were short a bagel. Most reputable food service locations would have comped at least part of that order and not even an apology was made- let alone trying to make amends. Last night, the tiny bit of avocado that was included on the salad I was sharing with my daughter was rotten. The bowl of mac and cheese was only filled 2/3 of the way. I'm including pictures of these two issues. Chipotle may not deliver, but you can order ahead and pick up. At this point, I'm willing to load my baby and toddler into the car, unload them and take them into Chipotle, and take them back out to the car, and then unload them again at home, rather than deal with the lack of service being offered at this...

Panera the food chain itself has really declined over the years, you can especially tell that by their menu which is all over the place (especially in terms of quality) and how they're always pitching limited time things because they don't know what they want to do. For that the quality of food at any location can only be a 3 at most. Sandwiches are usually built (stacked) poorly, not uncommon to find half your ingredients in one side of the sandwich and half on the other. This chain also really skimps on proteins, often have to get an "extra meat" option.

The one thing this chain should get right is bread and pastries. Since-you know, it's in the name. But today (typical experience) the croissant I got was hard. That's not how a croissant is supposed to be. Like the frozen oven bake croissants I get from trader joes are superior and like 1/5 the cost.

I've been frequenting this location for a couple years now, it tends to be dirty around the beverage areas (cold area is the worst, the coffee area that sits in front of the employees is generally better), there isn't really good customer service, employees are nice, but often rather ignorant of their own foods, or even if you ask for help, they just sort of shut down or something. The food is usually correct, I would say a mistake every 4-5 orders which is higher than even a Taco Bell.

To me it looks like there is a management problem at...

I went in to Panera with my wife and daughter after a very long day and ordered a chicken sandwich with bacon and Mac and cheese. I got it to go so unfortunately I did not notice until after I got home but my sandwich had only one piece of bacon on the entire thing, the tomatoes were practically frozen, and the avocado was in awful shape. Honestly, it was more of a salad on soggy bread than anything. The Mac and cheese was awful...so much so that even my 3 year old wouldn't eat it and come on...what 3 year old doesn't LOVE Mac and cheese? My daughter literally asks for it every day...but from there; she spit it out. Not to. mention that when we went in to place our order the staff was rude, the other customers were fake pretentious (but like...what right do you have to act superior when you're playing chess in a glorified subway), and the ginger-ale was basically gold colored water. Over all I would not recommend going to this establishment...definitely not this location...and oh yeah; how much did I pay for such an awful experience you might be asking yourself? $26.00...we could've gone ANYWHERE else. Honestly, we should've just gone to Chik-Fil-A...it's right...