Panera Bread

I work in the area so end up coming here a lot. I’ve never been disappointed in the service or the food. It’s relatively quick and the food is yummy.

I have been coming to the Apple Valley Panera for several years and never had a bad experience until the past year. Sunday, 9−27−15, my daughter and I stopped in around 3 p.m. There were less than 10 customers who had been served and already sitting at tables. Not busy at all. No one in line. The order taker/​cashier was a scowling young blonde with a pony tail who did not smile. She tersely asked what I wanted and her attitude was so different from what I was used to that I was kind of taken aback. I gave her my order, got the buzzer, waited about 5 minutes for completion. They gave me the wrong soup, no chips (which I had chosen over the baguette). Once they corrected the order, the soup was lukewarm. Some guy was tearing around in a red shirt replacing contents of soup servers, sweeping the floor, and no one seemed to be happy to be working there. It looks like they are converting to a more «automated» system requiring fewer staff, but it wasn’t up and running yet. The dirty dish collection point was overflowing. Very poor service and management.

This place is still completely disorganized. Every one in their long lines are confused. I ordered and paid for 5 cinnamon bagels and other food. My other food was taking a while, but I noticed they were running out of the bagels as they were handing them to people that paid after me. I finally said something and they set mine aside and indeed that was the last of their batches. It will be a long time before the wife convinces me to come here again.

What happened? We used to come here quite often, there is always something for both of us and our 8 year old. We have frequented here for a couple years until recently. I don’t know if management changed or what, but the last couple times has been awful!
This last time we went we ordered a chicken bacon avocado salad and a chicken avocado sandwich. It came out quick even though they were busy, and that is about all the positive I have to say for it.
First off, the salad was a hot mess, avocado was rotten, I know it looks «bruised» after sitting out normally, but this was straight up bad avocado. One piece still had the skin and stem attached to it, I accredit that to pure laziness. Husband picked the avocado out of the salad and then noticed the lettuce was slimy as well. He was still going to eat it! I finally grabbed it away from him and went to the counter to talk to a manager. The manager was really nice and had it remade and delivered to our table pretty quickly, everything looked good.
I took a bite of my sandwich and of course, bad avocado and my tomato was completely green… and crunchy. Went back to the counter and the manager apologized and brought a new sandwich out… super disappointed!
It really seems like the restaurants around here aren’t checking quality of food before it goes out. I have been a manager, when you don’t care… your staff won’t either. They need to get on top of it before it causes a negative impact on the store itself. We weren’t the only ones having issues that night… wake up management.

Good food served quickly — some of the tables were a bit crumb laden but all in all a decent lunch — I can’t really wax poetic here… if you’re hungry, give it a shot (we like it).

I love this Panera, have been coming here since they opened. The staff are always very nice and courteous and I enjoy the fact that I can get in and out in a relatively short amount of time.
Two concerns I’ve noticed however about this location. The ordering process is very unorganized. There are registers positioned across both the bakery and sandwich areas and often people crowd in the restaurant entrance not knowing if they’re in line, simply looking at the menu, waiting for a smoothie, or waiting for an order. What would (really) help is if they got some line dividers of some sort to help people form lines when they’re ready to order. I feel that this would help speed up the ordering process.
Second, there have been multiple times where they run out of bagel selections quite early on into the morning. Not knowing their selection forecasting, but one would imagine that they would stock up more on (popular) bagel selections for this very reason.
Overall though I’ll continue to be a visitor!

I’d been coming to this panera ever since I moved here but then my last two visits served me awful. My visit before today I was serve a very cold soup and they did nothing. Today, my LAST visit to this area I ordered a smoothie and when I received it there were left overs of the juices on the side of the cup which was sticky and nasty! Also my spoon for my soup was unwash!!! I told the lady about what happened all they did was say sorry and switched my spoon and walked away while I was saying something. Now that I realized it looks like this place very unsanitized. They have stains on their seats, utensils, and served very poor.

I had a couple days off this week and with the brutal cold decided to treat myself to my favorite sandwich, the Smokehouse Turkey panini. I usually get this once a week or more (nine visits in the past six weeks) at one of three around the twin cities. Either the Apple Valley, Burnsville or the Mpls skyway locations.
Usually, I am on my lunch so I only have 30 minutes to get the food and eat so I typically have called ahead. A few weeks ago Panera started requiring payment upon ordering and I unwittingly forgot that meant I was not earning rewards on my card, since I no longer was paying at the register.
Well, darn it, I figured I am a regular customer so maybe they could figure out a way to help me get at least some credit for all those Smokehouse Turkeys I paid for over the phone. When I went to pick up my sandwich at Apple Valley I saw a manager and thought «this should work out great».
I explained the situation and the manager asked if I had the receipts for those visits. I explained that I do not save the receipts but I could bring in my bank statements showing the purchases.
He seemed really distracted talking to the other employees as I was sharing the story and I found out that was because he already had his patent answer. «Well, there is nothing we can do for you if you do not have the receipts. Then the cashier cheerfully said «you do have a free bagel available».
Well, to be honest I wanted to shove that bagel up the heavy set managers a– but just decided I would instead use the power of the internet to make my point. If you want a great overall experience go to the Burnsville location. It is only about 5 — 10 minutes away and you will not only get a better sandwich but the management at that location actually cares and is wonderful. The guy in Apple Valley needs to stop flirting with his über young cashiers. Yeah dude, a 17 year old high school senior is not going to be attracted to a 30 something overweight guy unless you are a movie star. Stop wasting time and get back to work!

Some of the WORST Customer Service I’ve experienced, and I’m a Manager at a restaurant so I would know. No one greeted us, no one offered to help, had eyes rolling and long impatient sighs while ordering, just passion BAD. Food and drinks, VERY good thank goodness.

Come to Panera on a cold day and have a hot soup.

Being that I have eaten at Panera’s before, you come in with an expectation and this location met that criteria. This is a clean location and the food was to the standard I expected. Seems you can always count on Panera to bring the same consistency no matter where you are in the country!