Panera Bread — Restaurant in Town of Clifton Park

A family member placed a large order before prom online for rapid pickup. We were on a tight schedule and online order said it was ready at 4:26pm. I race out to pick it up, forgetting my phone and arrive at Clifton Park location at 4:30. Look on shelf, not there. After a couple minutes seeing workers not really working on anything, I ask about order. She looks at me like I’m nuts and says she’ll ask a manager. After waiting way too long, they can’t find order at all. I use their phone to get order number, nope still can’t find it. In frustration, go home no food. Look at my bank account, they charged me the $66.28 for food that they have no record of? What?? Go back after prom photos, show manager the charge etc, won’t reverse it. Has to research it he says, what? Says he’ll call right back... nothing! Next day I call, nope, he already went home for the day. Employee says they’ve seen this glitch before. I say whatever!, but want my money returned. She says he’ll call tomorrow. By 10am I call there again. Finally he says he sees the order in his system and finally decides to credit back my card. Money comes out of acct in 2 seconds but its still not showing up as credited. I notice that they advertise that if they make a mistake in your order, they compensate you with a treat! Well if they completely don’t give you your order and still charge you $66.28 for two days until they get around to giving it back, I guess you pretty much just...

To start every time I go in I always have the same order. The last 5 times I’ve went in the store associates were exceptionally rude and disrespectful. My chicken noodle soup was just broth every time. I’ve had to go back and have it remade every time. What really put the icing on the cake was my encounter with them today. I’m part of the sip club, which I pay monthly for. They see me in there everyday 3-4x times a day. When I went in today to redeem my & my boyfriends sip club I went to the kiosk and redeemed. I went to the counter and asked for my 2 cups. I was greeted with a very angry “show me your receipt”. I told them my phone is in the car and I placed on the kiosk. They can see I placed the order behind the counter. I go out to my car in torrential downpour tell my bf I need his phone. He comes in with me. We wait several minutes and still get no help. We grab 2 cups since they were right in front of us & the staff starts verbally coming at us & accuses us of stealing. We explained again we have sip club that we PAY FOR. The associate continued to make an entire scene in front of the whole store till we left. If you can avoid this location at all cost. They make the food wrong every time. They accuse you of stealing when you pay for your items. & they’re all around rude people who only have teenagers running the store like...

Not enough dip.

Tried out the new chicken pesto dipper and the new BLT salad, ordering online which was easy and allowed me to use PayPal, threw in the pumpkin cookie because I do like the full seasonal frosted shortbread cookies Panera does. Total came to $27 even after tip.

Requested pickup at 16:15, arrived 10 minutes early, which is good because the order actually was ready at 16:10 and I wanted to waste no time getting home to keep it as warm as possible.

Back home I found everything was neatly packed, which kept it pretty warm though the salad still was strangely cool. Interesting. Though there was not dressing included, but turns out there was just enough. Though the same could not be said about the tomato soup dip for the sandwiches, not even half full. Really needed more.

Salad was packed with bacon, excellent flavor from the green goddess dressing, and the switch I made with tomato for onion was on point. The sandwich was basil central, barely could taste anything else, even though I got double chicken. The soup helped, but because there was not a lot, I ended up with more super pesto sandwich than I did with a lovely dipped one. And the cookie, was, well, ok. I've had much better from Panera, I think the frosting on this one was too strong.

Overall, super strong pesto flavored sandwich, not enough tomato dip,...