Panera Bread — Restaurant in Mission Viejo

I'm only giving one star for the apple that came with my meal. I ordered a bowl of tortilla soup and a mozzarella/tomato flatbread on the side (the apple was my choice of side for the soup). First off, the girl at the order counter mumbled so low, my daughter and I could not figure out what questions she was asking us. After repeating what we thought she said, (and we were wrong), we got her to speak just a bit louder which was just barely enough to catch some words enough to make our orders. When our order was brought to our table, it was held up high enough so that I could not see what was on the tray, (not a problem usually), but the server simply said "broth?" to confirm he was delivering to the right table. I said "no, tortilla soup", and without letting me see the soup, he continues, "broth?". I finally stood a bit to peek into the bowl and it was my tortilla soup. My flatbread came right after and it was hilariously delivered on a huge plate with my tiny sandwich slipping around in the middle. The plate didn't fit on the table, so I grabbed the sandwich and told the server to please take the plate away. Then, I took a bite of my soup and was so shocked at how very, very, very salty it was. Now, I don't have a problem with salted foods, and I can tolerate some foods that are a bit over salted, but my god! this was almost painful to eat. I had my daughter try it too and she squinched her face up from the saltiness . And, to top it off, the soup was barely past room temperature, as though they brought it out of the fridge and tried to do a quick heat up on it. My flatbread, a mozzarella/tomato style foldover, was equivalent to a cheap frozen flat bread you'd buy at the grocers. It did not taste fresh at all. The bread was semi soft in some spots, dry and breakable in other spots. Totally tastless and boring. My daughters creamy tomato soup was also barely beyond room temperature, although she said the flavor was good. She had the steak and white cheddar panini to go with it and she said it was good, not remarkable (something funny: the order person asked my daughter what kind of meat she wanted in her steak and white cheddar panini). So after spending $35. on our meal, we felt really let down. I can't assume all the franchises are like this because there are so many good reviews, but I'm sure I won't be returning to this...

I came in this morning to grab some bagels for our office staff and the manager who helped me out was okay. He wasn’t friendly but he wasn’t rude which is all I can ask for. I ordered the Baker’s Dozen and having worked at Panera when I was in HS almost ten years ago, I know and remember certain things such as… most people who order Baker’s Dozens are people who will bring it to some sort of gathering and they almost always prefer them sliced. There are the odd ones that buy it for their home and they don’t care as much about slicing but for the most part, it’s for gatherings and they always want it sliced with a couple tubs of cream cheese. So when I asked the manager to slice all 12 of the bagels, that was when he looked and sounded annoyed. He asked me “all of them?!” To which I said… yes. And instead of using their commercial grade bagel slicer right in front of him, he decided to use the hand slicer which requires more effort. He then stops what he’s doing and passes the task off to an employee named Parastoo. I was watching the manager the whole time and knew that he hadn’t sliced all of the bagels. So when Parastoo started to pack up the sliced bagels (all 5 of them) I asked her, “are all of those sliced” knowing that it probably wasn’t but I still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Parastoo then answers me with a bunch of attitude saying “yes, they’re all sliced!” And what do you know? They’re not.

I don’t mind that not all are sliced, it’s not the end of the world. It’s that she had an attitude about something that she was absolutely wrong about.

Please retrain your employees and your managers. And seeing as a lot of your reviews are two starts or less… this branch absolutely needs it. Panera’s food quality and prices aren’t that great for the masses to put up with terrible...

i love this place. i come here and eat/study all of the time, and it’s wonderful. and i typically don’t write reviews, but this just struck a chord with me today. today i was particularly annoyed at how one of the managers, i think he was a manager, was treating his employee in front of customers. i didn’t catch the name of the manager, but one of the workers messed up with something, i think it was the use of bad language by accident, and the manager continuously brought up the subject, loudly, multiple times. he told the worker he would write him up again if he messed up again, loudly in front of all of us customers. there is no problem with telling your employees what they should and shouldn’t do, just NOT IN FRONT OF THE CUSTOMERS !! his tone was so passive aggressive, and he was continuously rather loud in general while i was there for over the course of four hours. there are two sides to every story, but i couldn’t help but feel sorry for that employee, as well as distracted by this manger’s loud demeanor. the employee apologized profusely as well, it’s not like they didn’t care at all for messing up. it wasn’t just my reaction either to this, there were other people reacting around me as well, laughing at when he yelled people’s names out for their orders, when there was like, 10 people at most in the building, that’s rather small in size. he also kept telling the employee he “wouldn’t let this go”. again, managers are entitled to inform their employees when they are wrong, but there’s etiquette that goes with it, in front of customers in general and especially. very...