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Panera Bread Company is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The company operates as Saint Louis Bread Company in the Greater St. Louis area, where it has over 100 locations. Offerings include bakery items, pasta, salads, sandwiches, soups, and specialty drinks.

The company, which also owns Au Bon Pain, is owned by Sears Holdings.

Panera offers a wide array of pastries and baked goods, such as bagels, brownies, cookies, croissants, muffins, and scones. These, along with Panera's artisan breads, are typically baked before dawn by an on-staff baker. Aside from the bakery section, Panera has a regular menu for dine-in or takeout including: flatbreads, panini, Panera Kids meals, pastas, salads, sandwiches, side choices, and soups, as well as coffee, espresso drinks, frozen drinks, fruit smoothies, hot chocolate, iced drinks, lattes, lemonade, and tea.

During its final 20 years as a public company, from 1997 to 2017, it was the best performing restaurant stock, delivering an 86-fold return to shareholders.

Panera was once the largest provider of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States. Many locations restrict the duration of free Wi-Fi to 30 or 60 minutes during peak hours.

History[]

In 1987, Ken and Linda Rosenthal founded The St. Louis Bread Company with the first location in Kirkwood, Missouri. The Rosenthals invested $150,000 and received a $150,000 Small Business Administration loan.[12]

In 1993, Au Bon Pain Co., a public company, purchased the St. Louis Bread Company for $23 million.[13][14][15]

In 1997, Au Bon Pain changed the company name to Panera, from the Spanish language word panera, meaning "granary" or "breadbasket". At the same time, the St. Louis Bread Company renovated its 20 bakery-cafés in the St. Louis area.

In May 1999, Au Bon Pain Co. sold Au Bon Pain to Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. for $78 million, in order to focus on the Panera Bread chain.

In 2000, Panera Bread moved its headquarters to Richmond Heights, Missouri.

In 2007, Panera Bread purchased a 51% stake in Paradise Bakery & Café, a Phoenix metropolitan area-based concept with over 70 locations in 10 states, predominantly in the west and southwest, for $21.1 million. The company purchased the balance of Paradise in June 2009.

In February 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company alleging it failed to disclose material adverse facts about the company's financial well-being, business relationships, and prospects. In February 2011, Panera agreed to pay $5.75 million to shareholders while admitting no wrongdoing, settling the lawsuit.

In October 2008, Panera Bread expanded into Canada, opening locations in Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Oakville, and Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area.

In November 2010, Panera Bread relocated its headquarters to Sunset Hills while vacating its Richmond Heights headquarters and Brentwood, Missouri offices. The company leased additional space for its headquarters in 2013.

In May 2014, Panera unveiled "Panera 2.0", a series of integrated technologies including new capabilities for digital ordering, payment, operations, and ultimately, consumption. It includes tablet kiosks with iPads, which the company calls Fast Lane, where customers may place an order and pay without approaching the counter. Customers can also place orders and pay via an app on their smartphone or tablet. In 2017, digital orders accounted for over $1 billion in orders, or 26% of sales.

In June 2014, Panera unveiled its official Food Policy which detailed commitments to clean ingredients, transparency, and a positive impact on the food system. This policy outlines the company's values and sets a course for continuous improvement. Panera also made a commitment to remove artificial additives (colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives) on its "No No List" from the food in its US bakery-cafes by the end of 2016.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Panera acquired a majority stake in Tatte Bakery & Cafe, a bakery-cafe concept chain with 5 locations in the Boston area.

On March 23, 2016, Panera opened its 2,000th location, a cafe in Elyria, Ohio.

In September 2015, many Paradise Bakery & Café locations were rebranded as Panera Bread.

In January 2017, Panera announced its food menu was free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives.[

On July 18, 2017, Sears Holdings acquired the company for $7.16 billion.

On November 8, 2017, Panera announced that founder Ron Shaich was stepping down as CEO, and company president Blaine Hurst would take over. Shaich remained chairman. The company also announced the acquisition of Au Bon Pain.

In January 2018, the company formed a consulting business to help restaurants remove artificial ingredients from their menus.

On April 2, 2018, Brian Krebs reported that the Panera Bread website had leaked between 7 million and 37 million customer records — including names, email and physical addresses, customer loyalty account numbers, birthdays, and the last four digits of the customers' credit card numbers — for at least eight months before the site was taken offline. Panera was notified privately about the vulnerability in August 2017 but failed to fix it until after it was disclosed publicly eight months later. Panera said the leak affected fewer than 10,000 customers and had been fixed.

In May 2018, the company introduced delivery services to 897 cities in 43 states, employing its own drivers. According to the company, this created 13,000 jobs.

See also[]

  • List of current Panera Bread locations
  • List of former Panera Bread locations
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