Panera Bread reviews

3.4

49% would recommend to a friend

(18,760 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 18,760 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
1.0
May 2, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Was my first job. The only pros was the muscles I gained from putting away the truck deliverys twice a week, was originally asked only to fill in when the last guy quit unexpectedly. Waited for two years for them to hire a new truck guy.

Cons

I learned every position, in bakery and cafe, even learned the night bakery job incase they didn't show up, which was often, prepped for cafe in the morning and even came in at 2am twice a week for truck deliverys. Yet still I was receiving minimum wage and managers were not willing to move me up in the company, even though I was always on call to come in whenever they were short staffed. Whenever we would have auditors scheduled to come in I was always willing to do the dirty jobs, like climb on top of ovens to clean them, one time I was even asked to clean the dumpster outside. Then when I had finally had enough after three years I got another job elsewhere and gave my managers a FOUR week notice that I was leaving to make sure they could find replacements for all of my positions, but they still did not take me off the schedule or even try to train anyone new in my position. I finally had to just stop showing up after being at my new job for FOUR ADDITIONAL weeks. Those four weeks were exhausting, working 8 hours at one job, then immediately going to the other for another 8hours of manual labor. If you are social and a pretty, ditsy girl you will have no problem moving up and making more money. But if you are work based, and extremely hard working, intelligent and willing to do the jobs your managers don't want to, the company will use and abuse you. Get ready for the most physical and emotionally abusive and exhausting job of your life.

1.0
Mar 10, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some people you work with are great. Customers are usually pretty good too. Up until Obama care, the benifits were decent.

Cons

This company needs to get it together. Managers are overworked, and the poor bakers are seriously over worked. Do not be fooled by the pretty package, and people foreward culture they pretend to have. They don't actually treat their employees with respect. If you're in school and looking for a part time job it might not be so bad for you. The whole bake program is a joke. They let their managers treat employees very poorly. They do not even come close to paying fair wages for the amount of work that is expected. Retaliation from management is a common theam, and I've never seen a schedule come out any sooner than 3 days before it starts, in fact it's mostly 1-2 days before. It's nearly impossible to maintain any sort of work/life balance. As long as their numbers look good on paper, they don't care how people are treated. Bakers are required to clock out for breaks they have no time to take, and when these things are brought up, you will be retaliated against. As long as the numbers look good on paper, managers can treat employees however they want. Most employees are not even paid enough to afford to purchase a meal at their own company, meanwhile they have 2 CEOs that bring in well over 3 million dollars a year. Oh, and an added bonus, they plan to eliminate even more jobs by creating ordering kiosks instead of cashiers in the near future. I'm assuming this is to save even more on labor costs since minimum wage has been going up.

3.0
Oct 15, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

No supervision, flexible with availability, free meal each shift. Amazing staff at particular store, feels like a family. Job security

Cons

Long shifts with no breaks (10-12 hour days) Large bakes ($2600-$3200) with little to no help. Low pay for amount of work done but higher then average pay for baker salary. Third shift during college. (not recommended)

Viewing 19 - 21 of 18,760 Reviews

Glassdoor has 19,057 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.