Panera Bread — Restaurant in Plainsboro Township

Quality of service have certainly gone down since I first discovered this store. My fiance and I used to regularly order rapid pick ups because this store was on the way to his job, and they used to complete breakfast orders quickly and efficiently. This morning that wasn't the case.

I placed an online order for rapid pick up at around 8:36am. When you place order for rapid pick up, the website will tell you it will be ready 5-10 minutes after checkout. I usually give it 15 minutes for any error. We arrived at the store at 8:45am. My fiance waited in the parking lot while I went in the store to pick up the order. Our name was on the waiting screen along with 3 others, so I thought "Okay they're a little slow today. I'll give them 10 minutes." Our order is simple, 1 frozen mocha, 1 breakfast sandwich, 1 slice of coffee crumb cake, and 1 berry parfait cup. You'd think the sandwich or mocha would take the longest...

I see the employee gather a parfait cup, a frozen mocha, and put a sandwich in paper bag at 8:48 so I thought I'd be out the door soon. Nope, turned out they have no crumb cake ready. Okay fine, I'll wait a bit more. During this time that I waited, the other 3 customers and possibly 2-3 who ordered at the register received their order and left. By 8:55am I'm getting antsy because my fiance is going to be late for work. It took from 8:45 to 9:00 for one of the employees to notice I'm still waiting, and asked what I am waiting on. This entire time I'm watching my mocha went from frozen to cold, sweaty, and liquidy mocha.

By 9:00am a new fresh crumb cake came out from the kitchen. An employee received it, leisurely brought it to the front, and taking her time to get the knife and cut the cake like there wasn't an order waiting for it. By now I'm ready to just leave my order behind. Once another employee asked and realized I'm waiting for that order with the crumb cake, then they slightly hurry it up. I understand you can't rush food items, but 1) I'd like to be notify if my order was going to take this long and 2) It's breakfast, people have work to go to, this is a rapid pick up order, so I'd expect them to put some sense of urgency...

So I got my order finally at 9:06am, nearly 30 minutes after the order was placed. Everything's good right? Nope. I rushed out of there so my fiance isn't super late to work so I couldn't check my order, which I should have. My frozen mocha now is just sweaty liquidy watered down mocha. My breakfast sandwich was supposed to be niman sausage, egg and cheese on foccacia bread with added bacon. It was missing the niman sausage. There was a burnt piece attached to my foccacia bread that tasted like it came from an asiago cheese bun. I asked for sweet maple sauce on the sandwich, I finally tasted it in the last 2 bites of the sandwich. I couldn't even go back to have them fix the sandwich because I'm late for work myself.

Sad to see the quality went down, but I think we will be looking for a new place to order breakfast from. You can't call this rapid pick-up if it take 30 minutes to receive your order, which wasn't even done right.

TL;DR: rapid pick-up order take 30 minutes, order was wrong, frozen mocha is just watered down mocha, 30 minutes for a crumb cake slice, and the employees have no sense of urgency for...

Updated May 2022: On multiple instances, I have received stale whole baguettes (when I order the family feast meals) and stale hard as rocks petite chocolate chippers. I always use the mobile order pickup and I think they use these opportunities to get rid of old products. They should put freshness dates on the items they have on the shelf and then purge items that aren’t fresh. I had to get the petite chocolate chippers for an event to make ice cream sandwiches and it was so upsetting no one could bite through them!

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Panera has so much potential but I am constantly disappointed. I ordered for curbside pickup today and no one ever came out. I tried calling and no one picked up. I had to race in with the screaming children under 3 in the car to get it myself. Then I go home and open the large $9 order of Mac and cheese and it was half full (see pic). Not even kidding. Their ingredients are good (fresh baked bread, nice meat and cheese) but the sandwiches are always haphazardly thrown together and they skimp on the fillings. A half sandwich will have a sliver of cheese. Panera is not cheap. They would get more orders and customers if their portions were bigger and if sandwiches were more carefully made. No place to provide feedback in their app after the...

5 STARS FOR RAYMOND!! I've only read about this kind of unbelivable customer service in textbooks.. but I never personally experienced service like I did today -- which is what prompted me to write this review. Today I got home after a long day of work and was excited to eat my meal that I just picked up thru the rapid pick-up option in the app and noticed the dressing and extra bread I paid for was not in the bag. I called up (normally I am the type to not call).. but this time I wanted to make sure the manager knew.. the manager who answered was Raymond and he quickly tracked my order and immediately took care of things.. he comped the order. He then asked if I lived close.. ( which I did) and he said he was going to send out someone to bring me the dressing and the piece of bread .. I was already shocked by this. Then John ( the nicest delivery man ...ever!! ) quickly arrived with my order and said Raymond wanted to make sure I was happy and he redid my entire order PLUS a whole loaf of bread and 2 bakery treats! I will NEVER stop talking about this experience! Nowadays it is ALL about customer service and RAYMOND deserves to be recognized. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH...