Food Theory: Panera Needs to STOP Being So Shady!

Panera is becoming the new subway with all these lawsuits

Take this from a 3+ year Panera baker who was let go recently: it's about to get worse. Panera cut a ton of their Bakery management and is ACTIVELY testing FROZEN BREAD in Texas markets. Also yeah, I can confirm that all of our bread came from a central location based on each region that needed baked nightly.

8-year overnight baker here, (2010-2018). At the time I was baking at Panera, all fresh dough was shipped in nightly in 6 foot tall metal boxes on wheels; I'd get about 4-6 every night around 1 AM. It wasn't frozen when I received it, but it likely thawed en route in the refrigerated delivery trucks. Can confirm: soups are frozen, they come in big plastic bags that are dunked in a big hot water bath for a few hours before lunch. Made by Nestle actually, IIRC. Pasta is also frozen and nuked in a microwave a la minute during service. The egg mixture we'd use for those fancy-looking egg souffles is frozen too; we'd pull a few bags and stick them in the fridge to thaw for use the next night. Brownies, cookies, bear claws, cinnamon rolls, muffins, scones, all proof-and-bake. It has to be like that, though. I didn't have enough time in a night to make everything from scratch. Not when making $3000+ worth of product a night. That said, the quality of the baked stuff started to dip after the menu shifted from soup, salad, and sandwiches to the weird quinoa bowls and veggie smoothie things, almost like they were trying to steer customers away from the cheaper baked options. That's one of the reasons I left; declining product quality, as well as overwork and underpay, ($14/hr after becoming a baker trainer), and poorer and poorer management at the store level.

The irony is that the biggest problem for low-wage line workers isn't always the hourly wage. More frequently the biggest financial impact comes from irregular schedules from week to week and losing access to employee benefits like health insurance because they are hired only as part-time workers. For large corps, it's cheaper to hire two part-timers with few or no benefits than a full-timer with paid vacation, sick leave and other benefits.

Santi almost immediately going for panera's throat ya love to see it

I'm a simple man. I see food theory, I click.

Fun fact: I made a school presentation about caffeine addiction and used Food Theories Panera Bread lemonade video as my main source. ( I got 100%) Thanks Food theories!

I work after-school at a panera in San Diego and we are just in a whole tragic mess with the minimum wage increase We got a pay raise but the gap between new hires, trainers, and managers is paper thin To compensate we fired all of our bakers (its no longer a specialized role and now all of our baked goods are becoming simply premade), have huge hour cuts, and the new menu has significantly fewer options, removing a whole load of ingredients, and just straight up removing ingredients off sandwiches without a change in price This topic has been my life these past few months so seeing this topic on food theory is pretty validating Also I'm a working as a minor and yes the scheduling may be grueling and illegal sometimes with close-opening shifts ( 6 hours between ur close and open the next day) Get ready for the new era of panera

on an unrelated note, i worked at panera for like 7 months, not only was i working an illegal amount of hours per work week as a MINOR, but i was under the impression that they donated food but was surprised when i found 6/7 days of the week they throw out their entire inventory of bread at the end of the day straight to the dumpster EDIT: i got permission from the waste manager to take all of the leftover bread home myself which i took to donate it to food banks, only to be written up for doing so by a different manager who also clocked me out without my knowledge or consent which is illegal, i quit soon after

Love how Food Theory continues to remind me that I almost died not listening to their Panera lemonade theory

Keeping a starter alive for that long is genuinely impressive.

As an organic bread maker myself, I personally feel like it would be a really neat aspect of the business to have different sourdough flavors in different locations. It would make each location feel more local

4 year CA panera employee here.....we've been told we ARE getting the $20 raise. On the other hand, we're also cropping essentially half the menu. feeling like there's gotta be some connection there

Microeconomist here: Unfortunately the wage pressure section is missing a key element. The way described would be the case with an unlimited number of positions available, but as the wages increase, the number of workers hired decreases, so more workers competing for fewer jobs should still allow Panera (if exempted) to pay under the new $20/hour, as obviously from a worker's perspective $18 is better than $0. They would probably have trouble retaining employees, but that probably isn't that big an issue for a big fast food chain where they don't tend to retain workers that long anyway

I can tell you what separates "Fast Casual" from Fast Food.... I worked in a Panera for nearly 13 years. The fact that they have Bus-staff that come around and make sure you get your plates cleared or drinks topped off, or extra napkins or missing silverware separates them from a McDonald's or a Hardy's.

I used to work for Panera Bread; and the fact is the bread is not made from scratch on premises (IN MOST CASES). The dough comes in premade and frozen on a truck, then the baker seasons/prepares the bread for baking. In some very small cases, there are full bakery stores that prepare the dough and bake it on property - but they also provide the dough to stores nearby. It's frozen, packaged, then shipped off on a daily basis. Soups are in bags premixed, and bags are often placed in sealed plastic bags and stored overnight - it's then reheated the next day. Some people think that Panera Bread makes everything completely from scratch daily and that is not the case. It's still better than most fastfood places but it's not the way they present themselves.

The transition to Santi has been soo smooth, unrecognizable with content and delivery method. Kept up the food theorist atmosphere we all love! - shows how along the way there must've always been amazing team work

The lemonade video you guys made literally saved lives. At least mine anyway because I love lemonade and they would've caught me lacking because both sides of my family have cardiac issues. Thank you so much for making it and please keep exposing businesses for their nonsense.

Having worked there, all their food "soup, pasta, hot meats" is heated using a process called "rethermalization", or "put in a double boiler in the plastic bag it was shipped to us in", so most of the hot food contains microplastics.

I love how seamless the transition is for hosts. You’re doing an amazing job👍🏽.