Panera Bread — Restaurant in South Burlington

5 🌟 for food allergy safety plans & safe food handling!! MUCH APPRECIATED!!! 2 🌟 for overall "service;" 4 🌟 for food overall, due to there being barely any sauce on my Asian chicken salad. I could hardly taste it, and I knew there should ordinarily be much more, from my eating this dish at a variety of other Panera places. The real reason, though, for this, since I normally would've simply gone up & asked for more, was relative to exactly that -- there were other missing items with our orders, but each of the 3 separate times my mom or I went up to the serving counter where we picked up our completed order, the staff was haughty, irritated acting, or with the 3rd visit by my mom, simply ignored! She posed her inquiry 3x, she told me when she returned to our table, but the 3 staff present, didn't reply or even acknowledge her, though 1 young man looked directly at her! Please try to understand our customer position as this was the day my dad, also present, had his 1st post-stroke MRI, which was a very stressful event for all 3 of us! We'd traveled nearly 3 hours to get to the local hospital that did the test & it was all incredibly difficult on my poor dad who is also attempting to recover from a very rare disease named, "Castleman's disease!" Harder yet upon his full-time, non-stop caregiver, my mother! When we entered & placed our orders with the seemingly 20'ish, very pretty, dark-haired female, she was curt at our menu questions, not really what I'd call "friendly," but also not awful. When she took my severe food allergy incredibly serious, she jumped way up on my scale of service, naturally. But when we were eating, my dad went on about how delicious his bread was (the piece that came warmed with each of our meals), prompting mom to return to the front counter (this was after being utterly ignored 3x at the end counter) to try to buy dad some to take home, this female dramatically sighed, then told her they don't sell it. She said nothing else. When mom looked around, however, she noticed loaves wrapped for sale inside a neighboring counter. Mom bought that for my lovely, sweet dad, who enjoyed his meal so much. I wish so hard we'd received the kindness here that we are accustomed to at other Panera...

BEWARE: This Panera nearly killed me in front of my children. They do not take food allergies seriously and neglect basic precautions.

On a Saturday evening, my family went to a concert in Shelburne, VT. On our way, my wife ordered Panera which we picked up and ate in the parking lot of the venue. She made them aware of my sesame allergy— it’s on the order -- as well as my daughter’s sesame, tree nut, and shellfish allergies. About 20 minutes after eating, I quickly went into anaphylaxis. I took two Benadryl which I always carry, but breathing started becoming very difficult. My wife called 911 and I fell over beside my car. Luckily, I was in reach of my daughter’s two kid-size epi pens, so I managed to inject both in my thigh. Breathing got worse and I blacked out—I do recall the paramedic from Shelburne Rescue showing up; she got me situated lying on the ground and immediately put another dose of epi in my arm via syringe. Blood pressure was 60 over something… breathing did not improve. They gave me something in a nebulizer that finally opened my airway, enough that I figured I’d survive. So, I said bye to my wife and my kids as they put me on the stretcher. I got another nebulizer, two bags of saline, and anti-nausea meds on the way to the ER at the UVM Med Center. They checked me out there and gave me the equivalent of Pepcid and Zyrtec intravenously. I was monitored for three hours and sent home, told to take Benadryl every six hours. I called that Panera on Sunday morning and told a manager what happened. Unfortunately, not long after, I took a second trip to the ER. It took 3 days to get out of my system completely.

I have no idea if the Panera employee interpreted my allergy as “I want sesame dressing,” or just thought it would be funny. I never had a chance to know what it was since they don’t label the dressings when they put it in to-go bags; it’s just a small plastic cup.

It's been nearly a month and while I have had great discussions with their insurance company, Panera is ghosting me -- not telling my WHY this happened and HOW they will prevent this...

The food is standard Panera food. My issue is with their management team. I called about getting a refund on an order that my company pre-purchased for a Sunday, but on the day of the event, it needed to be cancelled. Cancelling the lunch order wasn't on anyone's radar, so I'm sure the order was made. When I called Panera to talk to someone about the possibility of at least getting the drinks/cookies refunded (these could be resold), I was told by Manager Joe that he would need to as his supervisor because the day of the order had already passed. He told me he would get back to me in a day or two. After a week without hearing from Joe, I called back and Joe was off, but explained to a different manager what Joe and I were working on, and she said that she would be sure to have Joe call me back the next day. Another two days go by and no call from Joe. So, I call again and speak to another manager who wouldn't even give Joe my message because Joe would probably be too busy to call me back, and suggested that I call back the next day when a district manager (or something like it) named Tyler would be there from 6am. I did not call Tyler, and I'm done trying to get any refund at all, but you can be sure that I won't make any more purchases at Panera on behalf of my company. And just to note, this was one of three lunch orders that we placed within about 10 days that all equaled up...