Panera Bread reviews

3.4

49% would recommend to a friend

(18,783 total reviews)
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Paul Carbone

40% approve of CEO

32% positive business outlook

Panera Bread has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 18,783 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Panera Bread employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Restaurants & Food Service industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

19K reviews
1.0
Jan 7, 2015

Perfect high school drama politics job

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice little place for a guest to grab some coffee and pastry/bagel and meet up with friends or work on professional or school related work. Great atmosphere to have a dinner with some friends/family.

Cons

Very little room to move up from associate or baker. Not much skill needed to do job correctly. Out of the 3 stores I worked at either as a Baker or retail associate, only one had a manager who stuck to the book and dealt with policies, day to day procedures, and issues in a professional and intelligent manner. Every other manager had their own agenda, cheated to get ahead, and used any and everyone to get ahead while pushing all other staff and associates down. Worst cafe's I've worked at are located in Lynchburg, VA. Both the one on Wards Rd. and Lakeside Drive are poorly managed (although it seems the Wards Rd. location is doing better than previously seen). Being a baker was the better of the two positions I've held and still somehow the Management team for the retail side seemed to cause more problems by blaming the issues on Baker's or other crew members rather than reviewing what they have done wrong. Overall this took away from staff and guest experiences exponentially. Not the nice little bakery-cafe atmosphere they were supposed to create, making it a fake-half attempt at what Panera Bread portrayed to the public.

5.0
Nov 16, 2014

Cashier

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great work environment. Tons of room for moving up and increasing pay

Cons

They hire a lot of younger kids who don't care to do their job, so you're picking up the slack

2.0
Nov 13, 2014

Typical Food Slave Job

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Quite a few fun, cool co workers and even some managers. -On busy days time flies by. -As many hours as you can handle as long as it isn't summer. -Some cool regular customers. -Relatively relaxed company culture.

Cons

-Disrespectfully low pay considering the work. -Horrible management above GM at least in my franchise. -Attracts a lot of snobby, difficult customers. -Constant staffing and scheduling problems. -Super high turnover. -Cruddy training and e learning crap. -Ridiculous supervised clock in system meaning managers need to clock you in and out.

Viewing 115 - 117 of 18,783 Reviews

Glassdoor has 19,080 Panera Bread reviews submitted anonymously by Panera Bread employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Panera Bread is right for you.