Panera in 2006 was a bakery and coffee shop. I used to hang out there for hours drinking coffee and doing emails. It was a nice place for casual work lunches. The turkey bacon bravo sandwich was great.
This. I stopped going years ago when I got a chicken sandwich that was rubbery and low tier quality from the freezer and a half salad and it was $25, it was of similar quality as a gas station sandwich…I drive by one frequently and their salads in a sandwich bread is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen…
I used to work in a doctor's office, and reps would sometimes cater lunch and Panera was one of the more common ones. When they got in the office it was usually a race to who would get the turkey bacon bravo. I never liked anything else they had.
Also their red onions smelled up the entire office. I despise onions generally, but even people who like them would usually throw them out because they were ridiculously potent.
Most of Reddit wasn’t aware of what it was in that time. Legit different kind of fast food option in the early to mid 00s. Even in the early 10s their student discount was legit even in HCOL cities.
I worked there around the same time. It is not the same. Bread is no longer baked in-house, shrinkflation hit it for sure (bacon turkey bravo used to be STACKED), and prices are ridiculous compared to then.
Some of the stores near me fell off hard, but the one I worked at seems barely worse to me
I do think the brand as a whole suffered from expanding the menu
I do think there is a noticeable trend downward across the entire restaurant field since covid
In your specific example the BTB is the exact same ingredients from what I can tell, the quality difference is mostly employee effort and attention to detail. At some stores the employees are trash and poorly regulated, but at good stores I think the fall off is less pronounced
My husband used to manage a Panera. They used to bake all the breads over night in store. The bakers literally locked themselves in overnight. They obviously no longer do this.
A hospital I work at frequently used to have a 50 year lease with McDonald's. Obviously the optics of that weren't great being the top heart hospital in the area, but being able to get a big Mac at one in the morning (24 hour McD's) was amazing. The hospital bought out the lease and brought in a Panera. The hospital cafeteria has better food for less than half the price of Panera, yet somehow Panera is constantly packed.
Sit at my laptop and send / reply to emails. I was working in sales and 2006 predates texting for the most part. So nearly all communication was over email.
In similar vein but smaller scale- Atlanta Bread Company. They were positioning themselves as a Panera competitor with 170 locations in 25 states. When they were good, I honestly think they were better than Panera at their best. Then their management got arrested in South Africa and I’m not sure what else happened but seemed like it was a slow death spiral for them.
Food was still good for a while, but the quality deteriorated and now they only have 9 locations in 2 states.
They were sold to a Private Equity firm whose sole purpose is to maximize shareholder profits. Best way to do that is increase prices and reduce food cost by dropping quality. They no longer make their food fresh in house, even the bread isn’t fresh.
The hospitals in Louisiana have crazy good food. I know its not common everywhere else but here, I know people that would go to the hospital cafeteria for lunch and they didnt even work there lol
We had one in the strip mall where I had my very first job. I think it would have been around 2007? I could walk in there with ten dollars and get a sandwich, soup, and a drink and be set. With my little paycheck, it was good food for decent prices.
Today it is far worse than anything I could make myself at home for less and have leftovers after.
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u/Edit0rz1 9h ago
If we are talking about quality and value: Panera