I had recently gone to a different Panera location and tried a cinnamon roll. Best cinnamon roll I've ever had, hands down. So yesterday, I wanted to share this amazing treat with the wife and kids, so I went to our nearest location here on South Hill.
I had just run some errands, so I ordered myself a breakfast sandwich, and three cinnamon rolls to take home for the family. I took the little table tracker thing and went to sit someplace out of the way (just my preference, as the place was almost empty anyway). I waited fifteen minutes before I got frustrated enough to go find out what the holdup was.
I found my order sitting on the pickup counter, with not one but two employees just lounging around behind the counter. When I asked if that was my order, the guy seemed to have trouble finding the name on the ticket. I clarified I'd ordered it at their kiosk as a guest, so he just read the order off to me. I confirmed it was mine, handed them the table tracker and told them the table tracker hadn't worked. I was dismissively told "Yeah, the batteries on those things die all the time".
Okay, cool, I get that, but there couldn't have been more than four customers in the entire place, and my order was the only one sitting on the counter. After fifteen minutes, you'd think one of the employees visibly doing nothing could have taken thirty seconds to do a quick walkabout and see if I was sitting there waiting with a non-functional tracker.
So I took my food and went back to sit down. Took a bite, and the sandwich had apparently been sitting on that counter long enough for it to get cold. Not "not hot", not "lukewarm", cold, at least all around the outside. It was warm-ish in the middle, but it had likely been sitting on that counter for nearly the whole fifteen minutes I'd been waiting to cool down that much. Assuming it had been properly heated to begin with.
I took my sandwich and cinnamon rolls and left, intending to heat the sandwich up again when I got home. Which I did, and the sandwich was fine. Then we opened the cinnamon rolls and I took a bite.
These cinnamon rolls were at least a day old. The outside was dried out, and they were slightly stale in flavor.
And so, stars on this reviewed docked for:
-Length of wait to get food
-Nobody notified me my food was ready
-Two employees just standing around when I went to check on my food
-Response to my frustration about the tracker was non-functional was met with dismissive apathy
-Poor food quality
All around, a lousy experience. I normally quite enjoy Panera, but another experience like this and it won't be worth wasting the time and money giving them more chances to do even a basically decent job. read more