Panera Bread

• 1. Introduction

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  Panera Bread Company runs more than 2,000 bakery-cafés across the United States and Canada, yet in Greater St. Louis over 100 of those cafés carry a different sign: Saint Louis Bread Company. The headquarters sit in Fenton, Missouri.

  The chain once held another distinction. It was the largest provider of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States. Its counters sell bagels, scones, and croissants alongside salads, sandwiches, soups, coffee, and lemonade.

  How did one bakery in a Missouri suburb become a name on thousands of storefronts? Who has owned it along the way, and what did each owner promise customers? And why does a company built on bread keep turning up in court?

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• 2. Sourdough Beginnings

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  The idea for the St. Louis Bread Company began in 1987 with a push from Ken Rosenthal's brother. The brother insisted that Ken visit La Boulanger, a sourdough bakery-café in San Francisco.

  Ken came home fascinated by how sourdough is made. The owner of La Boulanger, Roger Brunello, trained him for a full year.

  The first location opened in Kirkwood, Missouri. Ken and his wife Linda put in $150,000 of their own money. A Small Business Administration loan supplied another $150,000.

  The shop did not stay in family hands for long. In 1993, a public company called Au Bon Pain Co. bought it for $23 million.

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• 3. Deals and Owners

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  In 1997, Au Bon Pain gave the bakery chain a new name, Panera. The word traces back to the Latin root for breadbasket. It means the same thing in Spanish and Catalan.

  Missouri locations kept the original name. That year, the St. Louis Bread Company also renovated its 20 bakery-cafés in the St. Louis area.

  In May 1999, Au Bon Pain Co. sold its namesake chain to the firm Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. for $78 million. The goal was to focus on Panera. In 2000, Panera moved its headquarters to Richmond Heights, Missouri.

  In 2007, Panera paid $21.1 million for a 51% stake in Paradise Bakery & Café. Paradise was based around Phoenix and had over 70 locations in 10 states. Panera bought the rest in June 2009.

  In October 2008, Panera crossed the border. Its first Canadian cafés opened in Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Oakville, and Mississauga, all in the Greater Toronto Area.

  In September 2015, every Paradise location was rebranded as Panera Bread. In the last quarter of that year, Panera also took a majority stake in Tatte Bakery & Café, a Boston-area concept that later opened in metro Washington D.C.

  On the 23rd of March 2016, a café in Elyria, Ohio, became Panera's 2,000th location.

  Then came the biggest deal. On the 11th of July 2017, JAB Holding Company bought Panera for $7.5 billion. JAB is owned by the Reimann family of Germany.

  On the 8th of November 2017, founder Ron Shaich announced he was stepping down as CEO. President Blaine Hurst took the role, and Shaich stayed on as chairman. The company also announced it was acquiring Au Bon Pain, the chain that had once owned it.

  In January 2018, Panera sold Tatte to Act III Holdings, a company owned by Shaich.

  On the 25th of August 2021, Panera announced a merger with Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels. The combined group became Panera Brands. In December 2023, word came that Panera had confidentially filed to go public again, after leaving the public markets in 2017.

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• 4. The Digital Counter

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  In May 2014, Panera unveiled "Panera 2.0," a bundle of technology for ordering, payment, and operations. Tablet kiosks with iPads, which the company calls Fast Lane, let customers order and pay without going to the counter. A smartphone and tablet app offered the same.

  By 2017, digital orders topped $1 billion, or 26% of sales.

  Delivery followed in May 2018. Panera used its own drivers and served 897 cities in 43 states. The company said this created 13,000 jobs.

  Delivery later brought a legal bill. In February 2024, Panera paid $2 million to settle a class action. The suit accused it of misleading customers about delivery costs in 2020 and 2021. Panera did not admit fault.

  In August 2022, Panera announced a test of artificial intelligence in the drive-thru lanes of two locations in upstate New York. The system used a voice-ordering product called Tori, from OpenCity. Roughly 45% of Panera locations had drive-thrus then. McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell were already moving the same way.

  The digital side also carried risk. On the 2nd of April 2018, the reporter Brian Krebs wrote that the Panera website had exposed between 7 million and 37 million customer records. They included names, email and physical addresses, loyalty account numbers, birthdays, and the last four digits of credit cards.

  The exposure lasted at least eight months. Panera had been told about the flaw privately in August 2017 and did not fix it until it became public. The company said fewer than 10,000 customers were affected.

  On the 28th of January 2026, a cyber attack hit Panera along with other companies, including Bumble and Match. Later reporting named the group ShinyHunters. It reportedly stole data on around 5 million people, or 14 million records, and leaked it to the dark web. Two class action lawsuits followed, citing weak protection of the stolen information.

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• 5. Pay What You Can

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  In 2010, Panera's nonprofit foundation opened Panera Cares in the company's home market of St. Louis. Customers paid what they could, paid it forward, or gave in traditional charitable ways. Ron Shaich drew the idea from an NBC profile of the SAME Cafe in Denver, Colorado.

  The concept spread to Dearborn, Michigan; Portland, Oregon; Chicago; and Boston. Several of the sites served 3,500 customers a week.

  The closures came one by one. Chicago shut at the end of January 2015. Portland followed at the end of June 2016. The original St. Louis-area location closed in January 2018. The last one, in Boston, closed on the 15th of February 2019.

  A quieter program kept running. Day-End Dough-Nation sends unsold bread and baked goods to hunger relief agencies and charities. Panera says its bakery-cafés donate $100 million worth every year.

  Panera also made promises about what went into its food. In 2015, it announced a policy against genetically modified organisms and called itself the first food chain in the country to question them.

  On the 5th of November 2015, Panera pledged to use only cage-free eggs in all its stores by 2020. At that moment, only 21% of the roughly 70 million eggs it used in 2015 were cage-free. The company also added plant-based proteins such as edamame and organic quinoa. In December 2016, its third animal welfare progress report announced new efforts on broiler chicken welfare.

  In January 2017, Panera announced that its food menu was free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives. A year later, it formed a consulting business to help other restaurants remove artificial ingredients.

  Its "Cool Food" pledge, framed as a campaign to curb global warming, used traffic-light labels. Foods marked green were branded healthy. Those marked yellow came with a warning to eat them in moderation.

  The promises drew challenges. In March 2019, Brianna Tabler filed a class action in California accusing Panera of false advertising and fraud. She argued that the company hid traces of the synthetic biocide glyphosate in products it called free of artificial ingredients.

  Judge Lucy Koh granted a motion to dismiss in October 2019. Tabler amended her complaint in November, and Panera moved to dismiss again in January 2020. She asked to drop the case voluntarily on the 30th of July 2020.

  The egg pledge also fell short of its deadline. In 2021, Panera said that only 65% of its egg supply was cage-free, with the remaining 35% still to go.

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• 6. The Charged Lemonade

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  On the 10th of September 2022, Sarah Katz, a 21-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, bought a "supercharged" lemonade at a Panera in Philadelphia. According to the allegations, she did not know how much caffeine it held.

  The numbers were large. A 20-ounce Charged Lemonade contained 260 mg of caffeine, equal to four espresso shots. The 30-ounce size held 390 mg, equal to six.

  Katz had Long QT Type 1 Syndrome, a heart condition that can cause an irregular heartbeat. The same day, she went into cardiac arrest at another restaurant. She was taken to Pennsylvania Presbyterian Hospital, where she had another arrest and was pronounced dead.

  In October 2023, her parents sued Panera for wrongful death. They blamed misleading labeling and description of the drink. Later that month, Panera changed the label to note the caffeine content, urge moderation, and warn sensitive customers. Reports said the dispensers had also been moved behind the counter to limit access.

  In December 2023, a second death was reported. Dennis Brown, 46, died after reportedly drinking three servings at a Panera in Fleming Island, Florida. His family's wrongful death lawsuit said he had high blood pressure, ADHD, and a chromosomal disorder that caused a mild intellectual disability and blurry vision. Social media users nicknamed the drink "the lemonade that kills you."

  Panera cut the caffeine that same December. The 30-ounce drink dropped to 237 mg and the 20-ounce to 158 mg. In May 2024, the company said it would phase the drink out.

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• 7. Days in Court

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  In February 2008, a class action accused Panera of hiding facts about its financial health, business relationships, and prospects. In February 2011, Panera agreed to pay shareholders $5.75 million without admitting wrongdoing.

  Workers took their turn. Class actions filed in 2009 and 2011 by former employees claimed violations of the California Labor Code. They cited unpaid overtime, missing meal and rest periods, and late final pay. Panera paid $5 million to settle and denied wrongdoing.

  In 2011, a former employee sued, claiming he was fired after repeatedly having a Black man work the cash register. He said supervisors wanted "pretty young girls" at the register instead. He also said he was fired after asking for another month off following three months of sick leave.

  Panera answered that it "does not discriminate based on national origin, race or sex." It said he was fired because he had used all his medical leave and could not return.

  The store belonged to franchisee Sam Covelli. His stores were also involved in a 2003 racial discrimination lawsuit. Covelli Enterprises is the largest Panera franchisee, with nearly 300 stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Florida. The 2011 suit settled in June 2012.

  In 2016, a lawsuit followed an incident at a store in Natick, Massachusetts. An employee put peanut butter on a sandwich even though the customer had said they had a peanut allergy. The recipient was briefly hospitalized. The plaintiffs charged emotional distress, assault, and battery.

  In December 2017, former employees filed another class action, claiming they were never paid overtime wages.

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• 8. A New Era

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  On the 28th of October 2020, Panera announced it would add pizza to the menu to build dinner sales. By April 2024, the "New Era at Panera" overhaul was dropping flatbread pizzas and grain bowls. The company called it the most significant menu change in its history.

  The goal was to refocus on soups, salads, and sandwiches. The overhaul brought over 20 new or enhanced items, with larger portions and lower prices, to bring in more customers.

  The corporate side was shrinking too. Panera had moved its headquarters from Richmond Heights to Sunset Hills in November 2010. In mid-2023, it moved again, to Fenton, with less than half the square footage. Two rounds of layoffs followed in late 2023 and 2024.

  In September 2022, Panera said legacy St. Louis Bread Co. locations outside St. Louis City and County would become Panera when remodeled. Inner-core locations would keep the Bread Co. name. One St. Louis County location already uses the Panera name because it is a prototype of the "Next Gen" design.

  On the 14th of February 2025, Ken Rosenthal died at age 81 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. In March 2025, Paul Carbone became CEO.

  In July 2025, the company said it was continuing a switch begun in 2024 to a "par-baked" model. Restaurants would receive partially baked frozen bread and finish it in the store. Panera was closing its dough-making facilities and laying off workers. For years, breads and pastries had been baked by an on-staff baker the day before serving.

  The company was also reportedly rolling back its clean food guidelines, which had stood against antibiotics and hormones and for animal welfare. According to Reuters, internal documents showed looser standards, including some antibiotics in pork and turkey and animal byproducts in cattle and chicken feed.

  Based on that report, a 2026 lawsuit from a food safety and animal welfare nonprofit claimed Panera had misled customers. It said Panera advertised chicken from suppliers giving livestock enough living space, yet none of its chickens came from suppliers that met that standard.

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