Panera Bread — Restaurant in Riverton

My wife and I stopped for lunch and had a very pleasant experience that started with friendly, helpful staff and culminated in a fresh meal that was prepared in very little time. When we entered, the first thing we noticed was the new restaurant look and feel, which was inviting and clean. When placing our order, we had a few questions about the menu and the order taker was patient and pleasant in their explanation. It was obvious some of the kids were new, but they were trying hard to do a good job and were honest when they didn't know something. We placed our order and found a nice table outside to await our food, which probably took less than 5 minutes. My wife had the chicken teriyaki bowl and I had the Mediterranean sandwich - both were excellent. My wife commented on the bowl having a good amount of broccoli to compliment the chicken, and my sandwich had fresh vegetables and a good helping of hummus.

My only watch-out is the drink station. There are 3 very colorful juice options that are visually appealing - both my wife and I were going to get waters to go along with our meal, but after glancing over at the juice station, we decided to pay for a drink. I was about to fill my cup with the Mango Yuzu Citrus and my wife was going to try the Blood Orange when I happened to notice in the small print that all of the colorful juices contained caffeine! And not a little caffeine, but a heart-exploding 390 mg of caffeine - the equivalent of TWO Monster energy drinks! The label deceivingly said it had about the same caffeine as a cup of coffee. I'm not anti-caffeine, but can we please have healthy fruit juices without jacking them up? The other concern is that any child who sees those drink options will automatically gravitate to these colorful juices, and that's a recipe for disaster - both for the kids' developing cardiovascular systems and their parent's sanity!

This will definitely become a regular lunch spot for us, although we'll get water for a drink...

Today was my first day at the new Panera bread here in Herriman and may I just say the customer service there from one of the cashiers was awful at first I asked if I could have ranch on my sandwich which she said was an option but clearly online it was second of all. I told her that I had a free pastry on my mobile app from my account and it said on there that you could use it, and there was no exclusions, except for like the bundle bread which clearly I was not getting, and it didn’t have any other recommendations or restrictions so when I gave her my phone number to get the free item, she ended up charging in the end, and when I confronted her about it she was trying to tell her other coworkers and the manager that because I didn’t get a drink I shouldn’t have gotten it and yet I was showing them on the app that it said it was with any purchase so it was her bad and she didn’t even apologize for it Liz, the general manager there was amazing. She refunded me and totally saw that. It was just a complete misunderstanding and then while I was sitting waiting for my meal, the cashiers were offering other items that came with the meal, such as chips, apple or bread when I didn’t get asked that, so I picked up my order I simply asked the same cashier. If there’s anyway I can get an apple instead of a piece of a bread on one, and she hesitated and look like she didn’t wanna even help me with it and looked irritated as well at the same time and she just said yeah that’s fine as if she was just like upset that I’m the one who changed my mind one yet she’s not even the one who gave me all my offers considering I told her this was my first time will I ever go back probably not I really wish I had a better experience but I...

I normally love Panera in other states, so I was really excited when I heard there was one coming to Utah that wasn't in an airport! However, our first experience with this Riverton location has us thinking we'll pretend it's still not here.

We waited in our car for over an hour for our online pickup order (don't even get me started on their horrible website, too). When we finally went in to get our order, the doors were locked! We were watching the website page every minute to know when it was ready, so we went in the second it was. We had gone in when we first got there to look at the queue to make sure it wasn't just a technical glitch. The website said it would be ready at 8:11pm, it was 9:10pm when the order was ready. We had to go around to multiple doors knocking to get someone's attention. When we finally did, I think it was the manager, and he seemed annoyed that I was disrupting his conversation. They were still filling online orders, so why would they lock the doors in the first place?

When we finally got the order, it was late, and we just wanted to get home. When we got home, we realized that there was no bread bowl, the soup was cold, and the muffin we ordered must have been replaced with an old hard cookie (that we ended up throwing away), because there was no muffin and we didn't order a cookie.

The service is terrible. I feel both my time and money were wasted today. Based on my experiences, this is a poor management situation. I feel bad for the stressed out employees dealing with customers and trying to meet the demand of the customers. The energy was tense in there. - I hope they can get it...