Panera Bread — Restaurant in Oak Park Heights

it's always SOMETHING and I feel like their probably limited staff and me are equally as frustrated. Almost EVERY time, Door dash drivers are not handed coffee when ordered with food, and the side is not included (not entirely Panera's fault, I get it. I've been understanding. To the point where I assumed door dash is paying their drivers using my bread and soup). My solution was to stop ordering coffee and sides altogether and allow a two hour window when I could expect food. Then they'd always forget half the order or give me something completely wrong, my solution was to say "oh well, who needs half of what I paid for anyways", but then dealing with ordering from their window directly is somehow worse! So this coupon they gave me to make up for all that coffee and missing soup? Can't even use it apparently. This staff needs better support if they're consistently not able to get a small order placed at the window out the door in 45 minutes. We waited and had to leave without anyone returning to the window to take payment after placing the order. Before this they'd at least tell you it would be a bit and have you park and wait. This has happened before, so I'm not complaining about a one-time deal. Keeping the window waiting some is fine, completely forgetting or prioritizing other (not window) orders without disclosing the wait is above 30 minutes is not fine. I'm guessing they were overwhelmed by online orders or something, but I would have liked to have been in the loop at some point that it would be an hour wait. Am I more bummed than I am hungry and under-caffeinated?...

I LOVE Panera, and I will continue to eat here, but I will be steering clear of the Stillwater (Oak Park Heights) location until they've worked out their kinks.

I have ordered from this Panera 3 times since they opened and 2 of those times I have had my order made wrong.

The first time, my chicken salad was missing the chicken. I called and talked to the manager who apologized and offered to send me a voucher, which I have still not recieved. I learned my lesson and started double checking my food.

Today when I got home, I found that the dressing ramekins for my salad were less than half full. After trying to make it work, I headed back to the store for new salad and was taken care of by more than friendly staff and even given extra dressing. When I opened my new salad it was topped with an overwhelming amount of peanuts. Peanuts do not come on the Asian sesame chicken salad. As I picked the peanuts out of my salad, I assumed they were meant to replace the almonds that the store must have run out of.

The staff has always been friendly, and the store is plenty clean. The food tastes great. But as a mother, I just can not haul 5 children back and forth over and over because my food is made wrong. I'm hoping this problem is simply because the store and staff are new and I'm looking forward to being able to have an enjoyable experience at this location...

Wow....what a train wreck. Yes, it's new but still, many of the issues were easily avoidable.

1. ANTS!!! 3 on our table - 2 on a the seats. My wife mentioned the ants to the cashier and she apologized but didn't seem surprised.

2. 6pm on a Thursday and the manager(?) is holding a meeting with newbies in the dining area. Taking up valuable table space is one thing, but showing videos with the volume on max is a whole different level of annoying. We stopped in a for a nice relaxing dinner - we could barely hear our own conversations over the training videos.

3. Dirty, dirty, dirty. We had to hunt to find a marginally clean table and had to reposition dirty dishes to dump our garbage and place our own dishes.

4. What's up with the flavorless lemonades and teas?

5. Salads were pretty bland - you might want to revisit dressing portions.

6. Speaking of salads, why don't you have some pictures of the salads so we can see what they are. The descriptions are seriously lacking.

7. I've never been able to understand why Paneras don't keep their bread warm. The Baguettes are good - but they would be awesome if they were warm.

8. Pastries were awesome

Come on Panera - you've been open for over a month. This is embarrassing. There are too many other options in Stillwater to bother with this...