Panera Bread — Restaurant in Portland

COVID drive thru review:

It’s been years since I’ve been to this Panera due to a very poor experience. So many places to choose from in this foodie city...except during COVID. I wanted a decent salad, lunch came late at 3 pm, and I was in a hurry, and saw the “open” sign as I got gas next door, so I decided to try again.

The drive thru is a great idea, but the menu isn’t very user friendly. Huge. The ‘2 for’ was a featured menu panel, so I decided to try that, but the options are unclear and confusing. I wanted a half salad and a frozen strawberry lemonade as shown in the photo but no one could tell me how much it would be. I was told to “look at the website”...as I sat in my car at the drive thru with cars behind me. (Later in I did go online; it’s just a suggestion for pairings. Full price. No deal.)

There were 4 cars waiting behind me. I had some water with me, so I just ordered a half Cobb salad at $8.85, remembering that size with a price of bread had previously been very satisfying.

I paid, was handed the paper bag with my order by a nice woman wearing a single glove on one hand, and sent on my way.

I found a quiet spot and parked looking forward to a nice lunch. The bag seemed very light weight. I opened it and discovered the salad in a small plastic container, a fork, and a loose peice of white French bread that had uneven edges as if it had been ripped off the baguette by hand rather than cut with a knife. The bread was just thrown in the bag. No wrapper. No napkin at all, to cover the bread or otherwise. (Glad I had some wipes in the car). Even if it weren’t during a pandemic id be worried about that unsanitary protocol, so I decided not to eat it.

I opened the small half-full salad container; not even a handful of greens with mechanically shredded carrot(like from the grocery store), 4 small slices of seasoned chicken, half a hard boiled egg, and 6 (Literally) slivers of red pickled onion. Nice greens, but this was not worth $5 much less the $9 I paid, and I have to wonder what the difference is from the full size for $4 more.

It wasn’t satisfying. Not even close. Glad I had some trail mix with me.

Glad I’d come prepared for a $9 salad lunch with my own beverage, wipes, and trail mix.

Quite honestly, what little salad there was was flavorful, but I could have gotten a full size salad at Mc Donald’s drive thru for $6.50 with napkins and a $1 beverage that would have been more sanitary, satisfying, and less expensive.

Unfortunately there’s no way to post photos to this review, but I...

Not consistent. I work down the street I try and make healthier decisions during my work day. I go to this location a couple times a week if not more In the last 6or so months I have probably wasted about $200 on salads that were wrong. I normally find this out when I get back to our office and I don't have the time in my day to make a trip back down there to return the so I make a note when they mess up I checked the order before I leave and everything's fine for a week or two and then all of a sudden they get into the string of putting the wrong materials in the salad or sending out the wrong sauces for the wrong salad or half the right sauce half the wrong sauce. The salad I normally get is the Asian sesame chicken it has a orange color sauce and they put in another sauce that looks similar but is like olive oil and pepper. The times I get the olive oil and pepper sauces the salad is basically oily leaves with no flavor. And when I get the 50/50 sauce the olive oil pepper sauce cancels out any of the flavor from the sesame sauce that they have that goes with the salad I get making it a oily pile of flavorless leaves. The annoying part is the salads are already so damn expensive and I'm willing to pay but I really want my order to be correct especially for the cost that they are. Not sure what the staff is doing back there but every time I'm there it's a younger crowd for the most part and my guess is none of them pay any damn attention to what is going on or making sure they are making the right orderor have the right order before they put it in the bag. It's really unfortunate but I believe that I am probably going to start not going to this location which is sad and find a different place to get a salad from at lunch time. That's normally happens when I go through the drive-thru because it's convenient. The times I've walked in everything has...

I have gone to this Panera almost every day for the last few months, since I got a new job in the area and food/drink options are limited unless you're looking for fast food burgers & sodas (no shade, just not my thing).

The recent reviews are accurate, unfortunately. The place is clearly badly understaffed and poorly managed - others have complained about the employees but honestly I can't blame them, it's very obviously a management issue. Orders are wrong more often than correct, drive through wait times are never less than 10-15min and can be up to an hour, food is prepared and portioned inconsistently, the front counter is frequently unstaffed, and when they're out of things they frequently won't tell you until after you've paid and they've substituted something else (e.g. "we were out of the chocolate chip cookie so we substituted oatmeal raisin").

Once again, I don't blame the employees, I have to imagine this place must be hell to work between the dreadful management and constant angry customers. Hopefully whoever is in charge of this location can take a hint from these reviews, but unfortunately with the airport right there and not a lot of similar options in the area they may have enough business to continue like this for some time. As for me, I still work in the area so I still go most days for my sip club iced tea because it's way less expensive than buying a drink every day, but I order food as infrequently as possible, avoid the drive-through unless it's completely empty, and am on the lookout for other options close by. (And I try to give the employees a smile and some gratitude, because lord knows they're the ones who bear the brunt of bad management a lot more than those of us dealing with a soggy sandwich or half a cup of soup or whatever, as aggravating...