Panera Bread reviews

3.4

49% would recommend to a friend

(18,762 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 18,762 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
2.0
Oct 3, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Free Food - you get to take home all of the extra pastries at the end of the night. -Nice co-workers (usually)

Cons

Low pay.... hard to get a raise. At my location you had to write a "short essay" detailing why you should receive a raise. -Management kind of sucks.

3.0
Sep 24, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The discount is great, but not as great as other food places. Most places offer free meals, while Panera offers a huge discount, but not a free meal. Co-workers are nice, but not all of them can speak very well english in some cases. Free pastries and bread at the end of the night, within reason.

Cons

Hours can be long, and when someone gets a vacation or calls off, your availability may go down the drain. I have been asked to work double shifts numerous times, due to the fact we were understaffed. For a part-time job, I was working almost 40 hours, and our managers will NOT let you go overtime. I was told to leave early one shift because I had 39 hours. Many managers have different ways of closing the restauraunt. Also, manager would cut hours of people, and require 30 minute breaks when our hours were low. This sometimes made it so only one person could close within a half hour instead of two (which is impossible) Pay is pretty bad for the amount of work you do. There isn't any room for moving up in the company. You start as an associate and are either a sandwich line person, or a cashier. Then you can become an "associate trainer", which means nothing at all. It's just a title, no raise comes with it. Speaking about raises, a manager will say "I will do your raise next week", and it will take about 1 or 2 months before they even consider it again. I was there for about 10 months before my first raise, and that was horrible. I ideally should of had 2 raises already.

3.0
Sep 23, 2009

Home Grown IT

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The company still maintains a small company "start up" kind of feel in it's IT and operational support centers. - The cafes are always very nice, comfortable and inviting and the food is always very good. It's obvious were the money in the company is spent.

Cons

Homegrown IT is in serious need of updating. The companies support centers still function under a mode of being a start up concern which they haven't been for ten years or so. The company trades well on the NYSE and turns a consistent profit even in this poor economy, it's time to stop acting like start up which they haven't been for quite some time and put some money into the infrastructure and support side.

Viewing 18736 - 18738 of 18,762 Reviews

Glassdoor has 19,059 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.