When it comes to the “fast casual” trend. Panera Bread has been in the vanguard for quite some time. Established in 1980 as a modest cookie shop in Boston. The company has since expanded into over 2,300 cafes and bakeries in the United States and Canada through strategic alliances with Au Bon Pain and the St. Louis Bread Company. The company has always marketed its products as nutritious and adaptable, but recently it has placed special emphasis on promising only “clean foods,” defined as those containing “no artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, or colors from artificial sources,” on its website.
To what extent, though, does “clean” always mean “fresh”? Not necessarily so with Panera. It’s not surprising that a business operating on this massive scale would have to get creative with mass production methods in order to meet the demand for a consistent menu. In other words. They will have to use a freezer to store some of the ingredients at some point. Even if the finished sandwich they serve n’t thawed. The following is a list of the items you can expect to find with the Panera Bread promo code. That may not be as fresh as you had hoped.
In The Case Of Bread, The Dough
While it true that the Panera team bakes their bread fresh every day. The dough n’t made from scratch right there in the restaurant. The dough prepared daily and delivered by truck from a local supplier. It may or may not frozen.
An ex-employee of Panera Bread. Who spoke with Refinery 29 about her time there and claimed that the frozen dough used to make the sandwiches delivered “from a town about an hour away” from the location. Where she worked (though the editors did note that some Panera policies and practices have changed since then). Someone claiming to a former Panera manager on Reddit also claimed the dough premade. They claimed that “dough sent fresh from a regional facility every night and baked fresh every night for the next day.”
Maybe it frozen, maybe itn’t. But if the dough frozen as soon as it’s kneaded to perfection, that’s about as fresh as bread gets in a place like this, though it’s still not quite fresh.
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Panera Cupcakes And Coffee Cakes
If you’re looking for a cake from a bakery where the butter and sugar have creamed by hand and the finished product presented to you on a platter with icing and sprinkles. You might disappointed by Panera. The bakery-café does not bake its own cakes, either the coffee variety or the kind you think of when you hear the word “cake.”
The employee confirming that the products not baked on the premises and are not. In fact, made there. Coffee cakes and cupcakes, on the other hand, simply thawed from a frozen state, as opposed to the bread. Which goes from dough to bread in the restaurant’s ovens. Panera doesn’t appear to be the type of place. Where you can get your hands on freshly baked cupcakes because. They don’t seem to do things like freezing cake batter and then cooking it later.
Panera Soup
No matter which soup you order at Panera. You can be sure that it has frozen at some point before you eat it. According to a Reddit AMA started by a purported ex-employee of Panera Bread. The soup not fresh because “the soups made at a factory/plant/etc, flash-frozen, shipped to us, and we thaw it out in what called a thermalized, essentially a soup-thawed.” On the other hand, a poster who claims to a former Panera manager wrote. “Nothing made from scratch except the bread and the fruit and vegetables. A separate business prepares and ships the soups in frozen form.” And another ex-worker told Refinery 29 that soup “arrived in giant bricks that heated in a hot water bath in the back of the house.”
Brick or no brick, Panera’s soup is pretty legit, so I’m guessing they don’t make it from scratch in a giant pot in the back before serving it to customers.
Panera Oatmeal
If you’re in a rush in the morning and want a breakfast on the go that won’t too difficult to mess up, oatmeal from a fast food restaurant usually a safe bet. However, Panera’s oatmeal may not be the best option. Like many other menu items. It pre-prepared and frozen before it even reaches the kitchen. The fresh nuts and strawberries, however, are worth considering.
It is possible that the oatmeal’s lack of freshness is more noticeable than the company thinks. For example, one person who didn’t enjoy their steel-cut oatmeal at Panera wrote this review after their experience there: “The oatmeal had become a dry clump of a mess. Never in all my years of eating out had I encountered anything like this in an oatmeal-serving establishment. Please, guys. Coffee shops like Starbucks and Peet’s can get it right. If I were to have breakfast there, I would order something other than oatmeal.” Panera’s oatmeal really that much different after frozen, thawed, and reheated? Only oats and water? It’s hard to think of anything else that could have caused this.
Basically Every Other Type Of Baked Good
Well, it looks like Panera’s pastries and bread are starting to go stale. Another former worker told MyRecipes in 2017 that aside from bread and bagels. All other baked goods simply thawed and reheated in the restaurant, rather than made or baked there. Former Panera employee. “Panera Bread frequently boasts that their baked goods made from scratch by experienced bakers. The majority of the items in the bakery case made elsewhere, shipped in a freezer, and reheated.”
Panera Bread is not Panera Bakery, so maybe we should give them a break for not serving homemade pastries. Is there any way to tell if the cookies’ quality affected by the fact that they use premade dough or not? It doesn’t pass muster in our opinion.
Panera has Various Sandwich Meats And Salad Fixings
Someone who claims to have worked as a manager at Panera defended the chain on Reddit, saying, “Panera overpriced for sure, but their foods have no preservatives and are definitely higher quality than any other fast foods…” The former employee went on to detail which ingredients available frozen. They things you might find in a salad or use to make a sandwich. As one Redditor put it, “Some foods come frozen, but are high quality in terms of ingredient sourcing… toasted turkey, steak, edamame, corn, etc.”
To be clear, the meat used in the sandwiches may have frozen at some point in the past. But the sandwiches themselves always made from fresh ingredients. As another purported ex-employee of Panera commented on the thread to back up the claim, “… all hot sandwiches at Panera assembled to order and then pressed on a panini grill.”
And it’s nice to know that the avocado, romaine, kale, and spring greens used in the salads are among the fresh ingredients that arrive each day. But can lettuce freeze at all? Panera Bread might give it a try if it were.
Crumbled Feta
Among the salad add-ons available at Panera, there is one you may want to avoid. It seems that feta cheese is not one of the chain’s specialties. After asked what they recommend customers never get at Panera. A self-proclaimed ex-employee of the chain replied. “Include feta in anything you make. I’ve served moldy feta to multiple customers because I initially thought a piece of gorgonzola had slipped in, and then another, and then the bottom of the pan turned a strange shade of blue-green.” That settled it; from now on, whenever we order from Panera, we’ll specify that we’d like our food without feta.
The possibility of moldy cheese is reason enough to take advantage of the menu’s adaptability, thank goodness. It one thing to eat something that frozen instead of fresh. But mold is a whole other level of unfreshness.
Panera Cheese Sauce Pasta
Panera’s mac and cheese good. But it’s made by an off-site chef A former Panera employee told Refinery 29. That the mac and cheese are frozen in “individually portioned bags.”
The savory pasta side dish n’t made in the kitchen behind the counter where you order. Italy? Given that this country buys cheap macaroni and cheese in a box with dry noodles and powdered cheese. Panera’s mac and cheese not made fresh in their kitchens a big deal? Unlikely.
Panera Tea And Green Lemonade
Beverages rarely considered when assessing restaurant freshness. Panera may make you reconsider. Panera-trained MyRecipes contributor said, “If you order lemonade or green tea from a circulating drink dispenser, you may be drinking mold (usually kept behind the counter). The drink station’s soda and tea dispensers are cleaned nightly, but the lemonade and green tea dispensers may clean monthly. Black mould grows between the dispensing tube and cooling system.” Dreadful.
The former employee added that even though the mold isn’t touching the drink, it’s still gross and questionable. Lesson learned—order your beverage from the drink machines behind the counter to ensure it’s fresh (not moldy).
The Eggs Are Real, Though
Despite a long list of menu items that may not be as fresh as you think, Panera has one item that may be a freshness novelty. It takes eggs seriously. It “petitioned the FDA to establish a clear definition for the term ‘egg'” on menus. “Panera’s standard sandwiches feature ‘100% real eggs,’ which at Panera, means freshly prepared, cracked shell eggs and/or egg whites with no additives,” according to a 2018 press release.
Panera is so uppity about its eggs because it found that several top restaurant chains were claiming to serve fresh eggs when their “eggs” had “at least five ingredients, often more.” Panera’s #RespectTheEgg (their hashtag, not ours) campaign and callouts of other restaurants’ faux egg dishes are commendable. When will they label menu items “previously frozen”?
