Panera Bread Reviews

There’s a major disconnect between the experience in store and online with panera. In store you can customize your food however you want and you can use multiple rewards at the same time. Neither of these is a feature in PaneraBread or on the website. Want steak on the bbq flatbread instead of chicken? Can’t do it on PaneraBread , only roasted turkey is available to substitute. Want bacon on your Baja Mac and cheese? Can’t do it... they don’t have any customizable options for the Mac and cheeses... Have a dollar off a pick two and a dollar off a sandwich and a dollar off a soup you want to use? Sorry, can only do the dollar off the pick two. They won’t even let you use the dollar off a sandwich unless it’s not on a pick two! All of these things I can do in the store. There is no excuse for not being able to do these on PaneraBread or website. If they want to take away these options in store, ok I’ll accept that, as long as their customer experience is consistent between the store and online. Panera, aka Saint Louis Bread Co (as they should be calling themselves), is better than this and I’m extremely shocked at just how different these experiences are. I don’t know a single other restaurant or store that is so different like this.

This is my first time ordering through the mobile app, and the last time. I used the mobile app pickup option, which is probably one of the worst ways to order Panera. I love Panera, but PaneraBread makes me never want to waste my time eating there again, as it is so difficult to navigate and go back to the Home page, and redeeming your rewards do not work.
I ordered four items: all but one of which I had issues with. The frozen caramel coffee tasted very funny, and I ended up having to trash it. I paid for the chocolate cookie, but it was missing from my order. The French onion soup was supposed to be free, as I used my reward of a free soup after spending $10. It was not free, and I ended up spending an extra $8 out of pocket. I feel wronged. I will never use the Panera app again.
I have contacted customer service, but they gave me the cookie cutter reply and did not bother to add my name into the copy & paste. It said “Again, we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us, [guest name].”
I will not go back for a long while after this experience.

I’m really getting frustrated with ordering from the Panera bread app for delivery. Just about every order ordered this way always has something wrong or messed up about my order. Sure you can call the store and they’ll promise a free pastry or something for the inconvenience, but it does nothing to stop the incorrect food items. I’m not talking about seriously customizing an order and that getting messed up, I’ll get to that in a minute. I’m talking basic food items on their menu such as a breakfast sandwich that you can get with scrambled egg, cheese, and bacon. Not adding or taking away anything from that menu item. It will still be wrong!! Today, for example, I ordered just that, and they never put bacon on my sandwich. Then at times where I do customize something, say a salad but I am adding more to the salad then what comes on it, I’ll pay for the extra items through PaneraBread but then will NEVER get those additions. I like their food. It’s good food. But I will no longer order delivery through their app. I will go some place else. I want what I want. I expect to receive what I order. You can’t deliver, I’ll go somewhere else.

I ordered $30 worth of food today and wrong orders were delivered to my house. It was missing half of my orders and they sent me two stuff that I didn’t even order. What’s more frustrating is that the receipt on the bag clearly stated what I had ordered, but someone packed the wrong stuff in it. I called the restaurant and they had no idea what had happened. They claimed that they have no control over the Panera app, the delivery third party, and PaneraBread for refund. They were nice enough to offer me store credit but couldn’t refund me nor resend my orders to me. The restaurant, delivery, and app are all independent from each other which makes absolutely no sense....I had to drive to the restaurant to exchange the wrong order, thus defeating the whole purpose of online delivery and avoiding contact during covid. So, why didn’t I check the orders? Well, the Delivery is covid contactless delivery and the receipt clearly showed my orders, so I didn’t think to hail the delivery guy to retake my order. Overall, my Panera app online experience has been a huge inconvenience for me and I will not use nor order using PaneraBread again.

I love ordering rapid pick up from PaneraBread . I usually order the same thing: You Pick Two with a salad and mac and cheese. Recently, the mac and cheese portion for You Pick Two default size changed to large. This is a comically large portion (think family size) for someone who is also getting a half portion of another menu item. The first time I came home with a bowl of mac and cheese larger than my face, I chalked it up to my mistake. Maybe I accidentally hit the wrong button. However, when it happened again I went back to PaneraBread and discovered that the default size is large despite other You Pick Two items defaulting to smaller sizes.

For people who order frequently and click through without reading, this results in ordering more food and paying more than intended. Either this is a shady plan to make a few easy bucks off of unsuspecting customers or a terrible design flaw. Either way, someone needs to fix it. Since I would find no way to submit a complaint via customer care, I’m doing so in more public forum.

I’d been using PaneraBread for a while, loving the rewards and simplicity of the rapid pickup. However, today the order was not there when I got there. It was busy, so okay. I waited a half hour, periodically checking on my poor dog who was stuck out in the car. Finally I went to talk with someone at the register, and they didn’t show any record of my order. The lady told me to keep waiting (for an order they didn’t have?!) and acted like I was just being impatient. No one would look at the order confirmation I had, there was no offer to remake it, not even an apology for the trouble. The staff completely blew me off, and I had to just leave. This is inexcusable customer service.

Update - I contacted Panera customer service and they did eventually refund, so I’ll add a star for that. The process to get that done was still a bit of a pain, though, and I’m reluctant to go back after such a terrible experience.

My suggestion - the cafe needs visibility to track PaneraBread orders, and if the cafe is busy, there needs to be a way for that to be factored into the pickup time. PaneraBread isn’t worth anything if you don’t get what was ordered!

My review is due to a long wait for food service. Why is that on PaneraBread review? Because PaneraBread caused the delay. My family and I came to Panera and sat at a table rather than use the kiosk. Part of that decision was the line for the kiosk, the other part was my four children not being able to wait while we order. Put in our two adult and four kid meals for eat-in service with a table number, ordered a dozen cookies, and added a tip. Total amount was just under $100. Our order confirmation showed a ONE HOUR wait. While we waited, we watched several families enter, order, eat, and leave. Come to find out that if the total is around $100, PaneraBread delays placing the order for an hour, even if you are already in the store. That is the kind of app design that infuriates customers and calls to the manager. Quit setting your associates up for failure and add a logic that eat-in orders with a table number get expedited no matter the cost.
TLDR: PaneraBread adds an hour to your order even if you are already seated.

Allowing ordering ahead with the pickup location being drive thru would help optimize drive thru throughout, increase availability of order and pickup options, and increase customer satisfaction. I was in a unique position of not being able to leave my car due to a sleeping baby. I also had a gift card that was loaded on the Panera App. Because the Panera App lacks the ability to make a gift card payment from PaneraBread either inside or in the drive thru (another Continuous Improvement idea), I order the Rapid Pickup option, but then went into the Drive Thru to pickup. This both confused and bothered the employee, but thankfully his critical thinking skills allowed him to move his arms and legs to pickup up the sandwich from one section of the prep area to another. Fix this easy problem by allowing drive thru pickup as an online order option. It’s easy, is barely a couple line software update and a 30 standup meeting in the stores. The ROI is much higher then the LOE involved.

Initially I was absolutely loving PaneraBread I could order my food without standing in line, order to pick it up at my convenience, and more. That was until I did an update. After the update the first issue I had was it would say the restaurant was closed even though I would be right in the restaurant trying to place my order. Not only that but the restaurant didn’t close for at least 8 hours. Then another update came out so it did that update. Well after that update came out, I am now not able to login at all. I have been working with customer service on resetting passwords, being given passwords from customer support, deleting the cachet/history/cookies, uninstalling and reinstalling PaneraBread , trying from different devices, trying while on the Wi-Fi, tried someone else’s Wi-Fi, I’ve tried using my cell phone data, even after all that I still cannot login. So now PaneraBread has become pointless.

I love Panera. I’ve been going to Panera for a long, long time. I also love that Panera can deliver to my house! Super convenient when I’m in the mood for a Bacon Turkey Bravo or a blueberry scone. PaneraBread is easy to use and I love it...but I’d like to suggest one thing. When you’re on PaneraBread ordering for delivery and you’re on the page where you select when you’d like it to arrive, it should warn customers at that point that delivery is delayed because of high volume.

My issue is that I’ve spent time ordering items and also customizing some of them, and when I go to pay it THEN says that they’re super busy and suggests a new delivery time. That suggestion should be before the order is placed so it saves time for the customer. Or even before you go to pay for it. Some kind of warning would be helpful.

I know Panera is busy in the AM and that’s okay. I still love Panera!!

My review would get 5 stars if Panera would stop taking away the Thai chicken salad, and also if the location in my city didn't become god awful all of a sudden, but they deserve a little praise. This is my favorite place ever, so I know one store doesn't speak for all Panera's, I just can't get over what it once was. The one in my city must just have bad ingredients or something, because it's not even close to what I'm used to. I could convince myself to pay for this over priced food when it was good, but now that my favorite salad to eat this time of year is gone and the place almost has more of a fast food feel (my food is always thrown together and the quality is long gone), it's hard to keep frequenting this location. Anyways, Panera gets my 4 star review this time because I signed up for the "free" coffee subscription, which was great, and they ACTUALLY EMAILED me when my subscription was about to renew. Nothing's worse than being low on funds and seeing some random subscription come out of your account. Thankfully, Panera has a heart and was so kind as to notify me before that happened. So I canceled and now all is well! Love u guys <3 bring back Thai chicken salad. now.

PaneraBread is a big step in the right direction, but I'm honestly surprised by all the super positive reviews for it. Yes, it works for the most part, but it's far from ideal. Note: I frequently use it for Rapid Pick-up orders, on an iPhone 7. It's cumbersome to peruse the lengthy menu. Search functionality would be helpful here. The "favorites" feature is helpful but not well-designed. You must click backward while placing an order to access your favorites, making it seem like you're exiting the order . Whose idea was that? Not a customer's, I suspect. Also, PaneraBread 's connectivity is glitchy in ways that other on-the-go ordering apps aren't. It locks up frequently for no apparent reason, sometimes when switching from WiFi to cellular connection. But not always. In short, PaneraBread works and is far better than nothing. And the item customization options are very handy. But it's nothing stellar or even consistently smooth.

For the starbucks app, I click 3 buttons: the sandwich I want, the drink I want, and checkout. The process to order is like 15 seconds. The panera app asks all these unnecessary questions like “do you want to go to the store you always go to?” And “do you want your food now or 2 weeks from now?” The total time to checkout is longer than how long I flip through shows on netflix before deciding to watch the office for the 10th time.

They’re really trying to get ppl to be regular shoppers with their coffee program but then when you add a coffee with 1 syrup flavor, PaneraBread says that the reward can’t be applied at all. I don’t mind the $.69 fee for caramel syrup but it really confused me the first time I ordered when the pop up said the free coffee wasn’t applied. I had to find out in my second order exactly what was going on.

Last thing, the Starbucks app knows why you are on PaneraBread . The buttons are large and use color and location queues so you can see exactly where to go without thinking/reading. But when you log onto Panera, the way it’s laid out with breakfast near the bottom, it’s like PaneraBread ’s first question is “wait who are you again?”’not the best for subconscious brand loyalty I’m sure.

I absolutely love the Rapid Order pickup option. As someone with a short lunch break, I have little time for standing in line then waiting for my order. As someone who hates making phone calls to place orders, the no-human-contact aspect is wonderful! However, I've had several issues with inaccuracies in my orders, and I wish there was a way to send an email about them as well. It seems counterintuitive to create an app for people who obviously dislike placing order phone calls but to require a call to fix issues. To date I've paid for several items I didn't receive, and frankly I'll give up on going to Panera before I start making complaint calls every other order.
Later update: I really wish they’d update PaneraBread to display the *closest* locations rather than the most frequent. Lunch is a busy time, and sending an order to a restaurant 50 miles away by accident is an expensive mistake I’ve made twice now. My fault, yes, but both times it was because I was in a hurry and PaneraBread defaulted to my last order location and I didn’t notice.

PaneraBread has improved since I first started using it. But I've encountered two weird things, one of which is rather annoying.

The first is that when I arrive to pick up my order, which is usually curbside pickup, after I hit the "I'm Here" button, I see something that asks me to rate "PaneraBread ." It's where I used to be asked to rate the order/ordering experience and I don't know if I'm still submitting feedback to the store I order from, or if this is actually submitting feedback about PaneraBread to the developers.

The other thing, and this is the really annoying one, is that after I place an order it keeps asking me if I want text message updates. If I don't make a choice, it appears that it doesn't place my order. It looks like it only places the order once I tell it whether or not I want to be texted about the order. It just seems weird because I've already gone through Apple Pay to pay for the order, so I would think it would place the order as soon as I confirm payment.

PaneraBread is probably one of my favorite food ordering apps to use. The reason I’m giving it 4 stars and not 5 is that I wanted to draw the developers’ attention to specific bug. I placed an order for curbside pickup with PaneraBread , switched to another app, went back to Panera and hit the “I’m Here” button on the order confirmation page. Found out later that no notification was sent to the store — I made sure it was the correct location. Then when I looked back at PaneraBread the order confirmation page was gone —since I clicked I’m here and was presumably done with it— but the “I’m Here” button was still present at the top of the main landing page of PaneraBread . My guess here is that the confirmation page had timed out with no error thrown, and still acted normally when I clicked the button on it; hence, no notification was sent to the store and it didn’t sync up with the rest of PaneraBread which still showed the same button at the top of the main page. I apologize for the excessively elaborate description, but I wanted to give a clear picture to the developers working on it.
Besides that PaneraBread has been great! :)

As much as I love the food at Panera, my family is on the go and I almost always use the rapid pick up. I try to check the order before leaving but sometimes I’m in too big of a hurry. This sounds like a high number but I would say about 40% of the time something is incorrect with the order. It may be a condiment that I customize to leave off or sometimes they get the order completely wrong. Most of the time this happens with my breakfast sandwiches. My kids do not like cheese and sure enough it almost always comes with cheese even though I customized it not to. I live about 10 minutes away and I just don’t feel like going back up there which means a lot of times the food just goes to waste. It would be nice if somebody could double check the orders!

The craze for restaurants nowadays seems to be ‘to go’ and ‘quick pickup’ apps. Many of them are so difficult to use, though, that you’re better off order in person and waiting the extra time. This is not the case for the Panera Bread app.
The user experience is perfectly optimized to order your food as efficiently as possible. I did not need to sign in with a Panera account and I didn’t need to give any information to continue as a guest. I was able to pay with Apple Pay and didn’t have to give my name or email.
I was able to customize my order, removing some ingredients and specifying extra or less of others. The Panera I was ordering from ran out of the bread for one of my sandwiches, but PaneraBread easily allowed me to pick a different bread and order the sandwich.
I was incredibly impressed by the ease of use of PaneraBread. Using it was easily the best part of my day.

I have definitely started eating more Panera since I’ve downloaded PaneraBread about a year ago. I use the rapid pick up often. It is nice to walk into the Panera that has a long line of people waiting to order, and I walk right by all of them to pick up my order that’s already been freshly prepared. And then I walk right by all of them again with my bag in hand, their faces showing confusion and jealousy.

PaneraBread works for me most of the time, however, there have been some times where it acts clunky and malfunctions, such as giving me an error when I want to sign up for text updates on my delivery. And it is very frustrating when I want to order some food through PaneraBread , but it is not working and not available to use. Sometimes, if I kill PaneraBread and restart it, that alleviates the problem. Sometimes PaneraBread has been taken down for updates. They do provide a notification when they anticipate it will be ready to use again, which is nice.

I love that PaneraBread is synced with Apple Pay. I also like that when I want to add a card payment, it can photograph the credit card so I don’t have to type in the numbers.

I also like that all my Panera rewards are available to see during checkout. I can apply one to my order if I like or save for later.

Overall, PaneraBread gets five stars from me. I really like using the Panera app on a regular basis. But I probably eat too much Panera, lol!

I take care of a young Lady with special needs I’m standing in line and waiting is very difficult for her. What she likes to eat out as he doesn’t have his money available things to do during the day. So daily our main excursion is to Panera. The option of ordering on our way there and being able to pick it up and sit down and eat it without waiting or lines is life changing. Your pick 2 gives her lack of eating problem a breeze as it’s hard to know what she wants and at least she will eat one of them. She normally eats both and it’s mainly the only food we can get her to eat daily. I wanted to thank you for making her and our life happier and something to look forward to daily.
Donna Finn

Panera Bread should take a page from Chick-Fil-A with their customer appreciation for using their app. There is a limit to how many times you earn “points/visits” when patronizing Panera Bread. I made a visit once a day for days only to have their system tell me I have reached my limit for inputting receipt information. Each visit I spent over $23, and to have my visits refused is a slap in the face honestly. My husband banned me from going back spending any money with Panera. Not only is it a bit pricey, but he felt insulted and I was embarrassed bc I had been bragging about this being one of the few places around us for healthy-ish food. Chick-Fil-A allows points each visit. If I went 3xs a day for 5 days I got points on points which add up, even when you redeem them for food. Chick-Fil-A also allow you to purchase the entire menu (eventually), no limits on what they give unlike MOST apps. Which makes me go to Chick-Fil-A more often than I normally would. Panera Bread I know I’m just one person, but I normally spent $23-$30 at least each visit, never again! Also, for your other customers you should think about doing a scan instead of number input. I hated having your employees grabbing my phone from my hand to input a number instead of using a quick scan and moving on.

I don’t know why Panera felt they needed to “improve” their app. The old version worked perfectly and I never had a problem with an order. The first time I used this new version it wouldn’t let me remove the side, no matter how many times I tapped “no side.” The next time I used it, a week later, I customized my order specifying a half salad with no side. I checked it before checking out and it was correct, but on the next screen it showed a whole salad with a side! I had to remove that and start all over. A couple of days later I tried it again, and had a similar problem with my order changing itself. Eventually it was showing correctly, including my request for extra dressing. But when I picked up my order the “extra dressing” was not printed on my receipt, and there wasn’t extra in my bag, so I had to ask for it. I never had any of these problems before, and I used the old app at least 3 times a week - sometimes more.

I love their menu choices and the quality of their food. GREAT pastries, salads and sandwiches. Now if the management (not the store manager-the company management) would just get their act together and revise their application, interview, and hiring process, I bet they’d have MUCH better service. Most of the front workers don’t listen and are slow to help. My daughter, who is what I call smarter than the average bear, efficient and had food service experience, tried to apply for a job here right before she moved home from college. By the time the company got back to her two weeks had gone by. Then the interview was a week later. The second interview was two weeks after that. By that time she was five weeks into her summer and had another job! No wonder the company cannot good workers. They all get other jobs before the second interview and go elsewhere! Modernize and speed up the hiring process and hire service people who can serve your customers well. If it weren’t for your food and location I wouldn’t come back. If it weren’t for your poor service, I’d come back more often.

I love ordering from PaneraBread - very easy and customizable. But a few updates ago, it completely lost the order tracking capabilities. Now, when you order, there is nowhere to see the status of your delivery. Your order history page just shows what you ordered. For the most recent delivery I ordered, I used the tracker emailed to me with order confirmation, and it told me it was still being prepared until the moment the driver parked in front of my house. Then it updated and sent me a text for both out for delivery and arriving. Very delayed and not useful. However, that may be an issue with my store and not PaneraBread - I’m not sure. Definitely need to be able to see your delivery status through PaneraBread .

I also wish you could add gift cards to your account for online ordering. But otherwise, it’s a very easy app to use!

We go to this store at least once a week. We always order the Fuji Apple salad. The last 2 months the new people making the salads have consistently skimped on the apples. It is our favorite part of the salad so we notice. Once I asked for more (since I only saw one apple chip on my salad) and she gave me dressing. I explained I needed more apples, not more dressing and she sighed and asked another EE to retrieve some from the back. Apparently she ran out and instead of getting some, she just shorted us. If it were an isolated event, I wouldn’t be spending all this time typing. This has happened several times in the past 8 weeks or so. If it isn’t the apple chips, it is the wrong size bowl of soup, no bread or a grilled cheese sandwich that wasn’t grilled. Please get it together Rocklin Panera-we don’t want to change stores.

This version is maddening. I haven’t had an order yet (4-5 orders) where I haven’t received an “oops - try again later” message. When I’ve been able to get to the point of food in my cart, there appears to be no way to go back and add an Iran like a beverage. Or when I’m lucky enough to get to the beverage menu, something easy like ice tea is sometimes an option, sometimes not (that part has been an issue with the previous version of PaneraBread too). I’m writing this review today because I’ve spent ten minutes in PaneraBread trying to check out, but keep getting “oops” messages. Doesn’t matter whether I’m using WiFi or cellular. Very frustrating. When PaneraBread works, this process is absolutely genius and I love rapid pickup. I just wish they made sure the update worked first.

Just downloaded the update and after everything that I tried to do I received this error message at least once, most times multiple “Ooops something went wrong”. I had no problems with the previous version of PaneraBread . It took me 25 min to order 3 meals on the updated version of PaneraBread . When I went to checkout I realized that every time I had tried to add something to my order and received the oops message, it actually had added the item. So I now had 4 salads and 4 bowls of soup instead of just 1 of each. When I went to edit the quantity, oops message, 3 more times. Same thing when it came to checking out. This is no longer convenient and will think again before ordering using PaneraBread.