Perhaps they expect that customers might object to paying the fountain soda price for water?
Another thing that pisses me off about Panera (as long as we’re piling on) - IIRC they were one of the first “fast food” chains that started prompting you for a tip up front as you were paying for your food. Let’s see, I have to go to a register to order my food and pay, I have to go pick up my own food and take it to the table when my order is ready, and I have to bus my own table when I’m done. What am I tipping you for?
Yep. Every sandwich I’ve had there in the last 5 or more years I’ve pulled off at least a third of the bread because there wasn’t enough filling for the amount of bread. Salads and soups are a better value, IMO, plus the bagels are good. On second thought, just get the bagels… 
Panera is on our “road trip” restaurant list because it’s one of only a couple of chains that we know will have decent vegetarian options for my wife. Cracker Barrel is the other one.
Unmemorable, but as the OP said, consnistent and relatively healthy (depending on what you choose, obviously).
I’d be quite sad if Panera went under. There’s one near us. There’s one in my daughter’s smallish town in VT that’s one of the only decent chain places in town. It’s our go-to, on driving trips, if there’s one near our route when when it’s lunchtime (i.e. if there are a bunch of choices in the right place / time, Panera for the win).
I haven’t forgiven them for getting rid of the Sierra Turkey Sandwich a few years back, though. That was my single favorite item on the menu.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had Panera until a recent trip. I needed breakfast at the airport and it looked like Panera was popular. I got a breakfast sandwich and it was the most “meh” thing I’ve eaten recently. Won’t go back.
On the flight back, I again needed breakfast and there was a Shake Shack (also have never eaten at one before). Now, that was a breakfast sandwich! I would definitely eat breakfast or lunch there in the future but it will have to be while traveling since they aren’t located around these parts.
I guess it’s a sign of how long it’s been since I’ve eaten at a Panera that I had no idea they had removed this item from their menu. It was my favorite item as well.
I think one reason I got sick of Panera was because they were used for so many of our company lunches (like for lunch-and-learn seminars). The leftovers would then get stuck in the office fridge. And leftover soggy sandwiches are just so unappetizing that it pretty much turned me off of their sandwiches entirely. Not their fault, but whatever.
Totally agree with you; however, they’re not the only one who pulls this shit. Oh, you want free water, here’s a dentist-sized rinse cup. Bastoids!
They are better than frozen ones, but they are hardly good bagels. Luckily, I get up to NYC metro area often enough to get good bagels, & in the good, traditional flavors they don’t seem to sell outside of the NE or at those type of places.
This is straight from the standard private-equity playbook. They buy a perfectly good business, then they slash costs, lay off workers, sell off assets, load it up with debt, and pay themselves hefty dividends and management fees largely out of retained earnings (profits the company made before the private equity firm even owned it). This process of sucking the blood out of the company takes a few years, then they sell the pathetic remains back to the investing public, preferably before word gets out that quality is a mere shadow of what it used to be.
Oh, agree, they’re more like bread rolls but at least they’re consistent. There’s a place in town here for decent bagels but it’s far away and a pain to get in and out of… 
Well, in many companies the cups are counted for audits. So, the employee was likely correct. However, that just mean the Corporation is chea-ass.
Right.
Your change -as in coins- or a dollar in the tip jar. No more, unless something excellent occured. Yeah if I order and pick up at the counter, the tip is like a buck.
Yep. This is a death spiral.
I’ve only had Panera when my company buys their box lunches for the office. The sandwiches are almost always complete crap in some way. My favorite version of this is one of their sandwiches that seems to taste ok, but the bread is fucking bulletproof.
So, since my experience with them has always had at least one facet of complete suck, I’ve never seen any reason to visit there. If they go under, I’ll just get more excellent Indo-Pak food instead of viciously unpleasant deli food. I’ll be fat, but happy.
I think Panera was the first restaurant chain (or maybe any national business) to offer free wifi to its customers like 20 years ago. I know that they at least became the largest provider of free wifi in the US at some point. But I guess even forward-thinking companies lose the touch eventually.
So, wifi, yes; lemons, no. What a world.
Obviously, the worst thing about Panera potentially going out of business is that New York Rangers winger Artemi “Breadman” Panarin is going to need a new nickname.
Oddly, the Panera near me used to have cups just sitting out at the self-serve kiosks and you could just grab a cup if you ordered a drink. They’ve since moved them behind the counter and you only get it when you pick up your order.
Panera has been a nope for me for a couple of years now. Mostly, because there are better bakeries, and better bagel places (even chains) in town. And as also mentioned they’ve always been more expensive for a given amount/quality of food than other options including chains and hole-in-the-wall places.
Worse, their service is just plain terrible. Everyone there seems to feel like they’re special, because they’re not working at a ‘normal’ fast food/fast casual joint. The last time I went was because I had a gift card I had to burn, and they refused to honor the special THAT WAS ON THE BOARD even when I called attention to it.
Just a whole lot of of no. The only time I see stuff from them is that numerous school / work / events will semi-often have bagels and schmeer from them if they’re happening pre-noon, but certainly not going there with my money.
I tend to assume that they were selling it as “healthier” in comparison to a soft drink / soda. Get all that caff you want from a Coke, but less than half the calories. Or much less than half the calories of one of their latte options. But putting the default single drink at 10mg short of a daily dose was just plain stupid “wink wink, see how awesome we are” appeals that of course leads to major risks.
This thread reminds me of a very popular lunch spot I used to frequent when I worked downtown. The place was known for salads, fried chicken, friend seafood, sandwiches, etc. The place stayed packed. The owner retired.
The new owner changed the name, started using cheaper ingredients, added loud rap music im the dining room, and hired a mediocre musician to play on the sidewalk… Original music with lyrics about “Eat here, you’ll like it”. Business dropped off. Then, there were no more napkins on the table, you had to ask for them. Then, no condiments on the table, you had to ask for them. Then, no more drink machine with free refills. You had to buy an overpriced can. The new owner paid a nice chunk of change for the place. All he had to do was keep it consistent, and reap the profits.
Instead, he ran it into the ground, and went out of business.
I hope Panera doesn’t follow his example.
I’ve actually seen that spiral happen a couple of times, and while a LOT of the choices in your example don’t make sense to you or me, it isn’t always a deliberate choice to run it down. It’s often a desperate choice.
In at least two of the ones I know (anecdotes of course), the new owner wanted (I know, because in one case I spoke with them, and the other was a friend) to keep it just like the “old days”. Buuuuut… to buy the very successful business, they had to take out considerable loans. And if they ran it just as before, the profit margins were slim enough that they’d barely be keeping their heads above water with both the debt and overhead. So they felt they had to do something to increase business or cut costs.
Which leads to all sorts of price cutting, or gimmicks. And if those fail, well, you now have the costs of paying for that gimmick / consulting / loss of business due to reduced quality. And very quickly end up in a feedback loop where now you need more money to service everything, and ever less coming in.
Similar things have happened to places I’ve loved when rising costs of renting the spot forced them to a new location, and they had to take on extra debt to refurbish a new location, which meant cutting costs/raising prices, and long-time customers stopped coming because it was now out-of-the-way or dishes were cut from the menu (cost saving) or the prices were higher.
Small retail places, food or otherwise, can easily die by that death of a thousand cuts. Panera, as a huge chain, has a lot fewer excuses. As reported upthread, sure looks like the death of a thousand corporate/investor leeches instead. Although, as described, it may well be the same thing writ large and with NO good intentions: take a lot of debt, run it into the ground while enriching yourself, and foist off the debt and dead business on someone else.
In the pre-COVID days, I would sometimes order from Panera’s catering menu for lunch meetings. For one order, I showed up asking about it and an employee told me there was no such order. I was in a panic and drove to another nearby Panera hoping but no dice. I ended up making an emergency order from Potbelly and at least managed to get sandwiches for everyone even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted.
While I was trying to figure out how to stop payment on the company credit card, Panera called to let me know my order had been sitting there for a while. She explained the employee I spoke with looked at the regular orders not the catering orders, but my order was ready to pick up. I told her to cancel the order because I had already purchased from Potbelly. It was a pretty big hit for Panera and I stopped ordering from them for our meetings.
Last time I went in there, many tables were taken with people with computers and and making a drink last for hours. I am not sure how that is a money maker.
(Clue) “Too late!”.
That lines up surprisingly closely with my own experience. I was a late explorer of Panera, starting maybe 2015. They were fine - a little pricey for a full sandwich, but I’m kinda price insensitive when buying lunch for myself. I was never a genuine regular, but there was one near work so I visited occasionally for a few years. I started tailing off a little before the pandemic, because it seemed vaguely more and more meh. Tried it again about a year ago after a maybe three year hiatus and…ehhh…it seems to have continued to slip a bit. Not awful so much as not particularly enticing.
Always a bit sad to see these slow corporate death spirals.