Panera Phoenix airport- Corporate- Drive Through Only

[storewanderer]

Panera in Phoenix near Van Buren and 44th surrounded by a couple hotels and large apartments has been switched per Corporate Order to a drive through only location. Lobby is closed permanently. They will still do curbside but may still force you through drive through if you try to get curbside.

I've never seen this before with Panera. With their price point and in this kind of location this is a ridiculous policy to have. Clearly a huge cost cutting move to not maintain dine in.

What is the matter with this chain?

[mjhale]

Last time I ate at Panera Bread, my Mac and Cheese was obviously microwaved, the bread was going stale and the self-service drink area looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the previous day. All this for a so-called premium price. Haven't been back since and it has been several years. It is too bad because Panera at its best was in a good spot with higher quality food than regular fast food but not as expensive as a sit down bistro/cafe type restaurant. The dining rooms were always clean and nicer than anything in fast food. I do think that Panera has had significant impact from the rise of work from home. They have lost a lot of the stop and get a pastry/bagel and coffee on the way to work and the go out to lunch business. Also, around me many of the Panera locations do not have a drive thru which limits the quick stop type business and the people who didn't/still don't want to go inside businesses. Compare with Starbucks which has a drive thru at almost all of their locations. Personally, I'd like to see Panera try to get itself back to where it was. However, like Boston Market, I have a feeling that this sort of concept has seen its time an people have moved on to other things.

[babs]

Panera is the modern day caferia. It's overpriced and the food is meh but if your looking for a lunch spot, it's a place everyone can agree on. Going drive thru only is flat out dumb. They're not McDonald's.

[rwsandiego]

Panera in Phoenix near Van Buren and 44th surrounded by a couple hotels and large apartments has been switched per Corporate Order to a drive through only location. Lobby is closed permanently. They will still do curbside but may still force you through drive through if you try to get curbside.

I've never seen this before with Panera. With their price point and in this kind of location this is a ridiculous policy to have. Clearly a huge cost cutting move to not maintain dine in.

What is the matter with this chain?

The area around 44th Street and Van Buren has gotten pretty bad lately. Although the light rail station is generally OK, the Circle K/Shell station is overrun with aggressive homeless people, many of whom used to frequent the now-closed Circle K that was on Washington next to the Aloft hotel. No one in their right mind would dine in at the Panera. The office workers most likely order to go and know better than to walk there, unless they want to buy drugs and/or interact with homeless drug addicts. Same with the residents of the apartment buildings.

Honestly, I was surprised to see a Panera at that location.

[storewanderer]

Panera in Phoenix near Van Buren and 44th surrounded by a couple hotels and large apartments has been switched per Corporate Order to a drive through only location. Lobby is closed permanently. They will still do curbside but may still force you through drive through if you try to get curbside.

I've never seen this before with Panera. With their price point and in this kind of location this is a ridiculous policy to have. Clearly a huge cost cutting move to not maintain dine in.

What is the matter with this chain?

The area around 44th Street and Van Buren has gotten pretty bad lately. Although the light rail station is generally OK, the Circle K/Shell station is overrun with aggressive homeless people, many of whom used to frequent the now-closed Circle K that was on Washington next to the Aloft hotel. No one in their right mind would dine in at the Panera. The office workers most likely order to go and know better than to walk there, unless they want to buy drugs and/or interact with homeless drug addicts. Same with the residents of the apartment buildings.

Honestly, I was surprised to see a Panera at that location.

It was probably a real estate mistake but with the apartments right there, plus a lot of airport traffic...

I've used those two Circle K units in the past and definitely felt a need to stay alert, but I felt safer at those than the gas stations around 24th/Washington. That area has a really awkward vibe.

[ClownLoach]

Panera in Phoenix near Van Buren and 44th surrounded by a couple hotels and large apartments has been switched per Corporate Order to a drive through only location. Lobby is closed permanently. They will still do curbside but may still force you through drive through if you try to get curbside.

I've never seen this before with Panera. With their price point and in this kind of location this is a ridiculous policy to have. Clearly a huge cost cutting move to not maintain dine in.

What is the matter with this chain?

"Corporate Order" from who?

At this point Panera is 100% franchised out now, and many stores are owned by large franchisee corporations who own blocks of stores.

That's probably who ordered it closed.

One thing about Panera is that they do a lot of business selling loaves of bread, cookies and other baked goods which don't sell in a drive thru or web order. That business is what justifies their generally larger footprint locations with big kitchens and large payroll.

Unfortunately another problem is the labor intensive model which has led to Panera basically switching to factory food. Boil in bag and microwave items abound and nothing is made from scratch anymore.

It's really sad what happened to this once high flying chain.

[arizonaguy]

Panera in Phoenix near Van Buren and 44th surrounded by a couple hotels and large apartments has been switched per Corporate Order to a drive through only location. Lobby is closed permanently. They will still do curbside but may still force you through drive through if you try to get curbside.

I've never seen this before with Panera. With their price point and in this kind of location this is a ridiculous policy to have. Clearly a huge cost cutting move to not maintain dine in.

What is the matter with this chain?

The area around 44th Street and Van Buren has gotten pretty bad lately. Although the light rail station is generally OK, the Circle K/Shell station is overrun with aggressive homeless people, many of whom used to frequent the now-closed Circle K that was on Washington next to the Aloft hotel. No one in their right mind would dine in at the Panera. The office workers most likely order to go and know better than to walk there, unless they want to buy drugs and/or interact with homeless drug addicts. Same with the residents of the apartment buildings.

Honestly, I was surprised to see a Panera at that location.

It was probably a real estate mistake but with the apartments right there, plus a lot of airport traffic...

I've used those two Circle K units in the past and definitely felt a need to stay alert, but I felt safer at those than the gas stations around 24th/Washington. That area has a really awkward vibe.

That area has really gone downhill over the last 5 years or so. I've gotten gas at that Circle K a few times because it's the cheapest place to get gas in the area.

I work at the airport and the employee parking lot is at 44th St. / Washington. What's interesting is that 40th St. (1/2 mile west) is perfectly clean with no real homeless problem. At 40th St. / Washington there is even a 24 hour Mesquite Mexican restaurant that just opened. My employer has an office at 44th St. / Van Buren and during the daytime it's also perfectly fine.

Anyone that is going to drive is going to go up a few miles to 44th St. / Thomas where there are significantly more choices in a significantly safer area.

[buckguy]

I can't imagine stopping for Panera anywhere. At least they're willing to try new things even if they are fundamentally in steep decline.

[rwsandiego]

I can't imagine stopping for Panera anywhere...

Well, there is THAT.

I haven't liked them since they changed over from St Louis Bread Company and changed the menu. It seems like they use too many ingredients and try to be "upscale" and fall flat on their faces. I do like their regular lemonade (or did, haven't had it in a while so not sure what it tastes like anymore) and their frozen lemonade (ditto) but that's about all.

[storewanderer]

I can't imagine stopping for Panera anywhere...

Well, there is THAT.

I haven't liked them since they changed over from St Louis Bread Company and changed the menu. It seems like they use too many ingredients and try to be "upscale" and fall flat on their faces. I do like their regular lemonade (or did, haven't had it in a while so not sure what it tastes like anymore) and their frozen lemonade (ditto) but that's about all.

Do they still carry regular lemonade or just "charged" lemonade?

The "charged" lemonade will be behind the counter this week. It needs to be discontinued entirely. The warning notices they have about it online, in restaurant, etc. are tacky and call into question the entire "clean food" message they have been trying to convey. This product needs to be discontinued immediately. I suspect they cannot discontinue it due to the pending lawsuit and somehow discontinuing it could be construed as admitting guilt in some way. I don't see it like that, but the product was never a fit for the brand and the end of summer/into fall is the perfect time to revive the cold beverage line up and trim it down for the winter.