Panera Bread
Panera Bread is an American multinational chain 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 Fenton, Missouri. The chain operates as Saint Louis Bread Company in the Greater St. Louis area, with over 100 locations.
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 by an on-staff baker the day before serving. Aside from the bakery section, Panera has a regular menu for dine-in or takeout, including salads, sandwiches, side choices and soups, as well as coffee, espresso drinks, frozen drinks, fruit smoothies, hot chocolate, iced drinks, lattes, lemonade and tea.
Panera Bread, formerly owned by Au Bon Pain, is currently owned by JAB Holding Company, which is, in turn, owned by the Reimann family of Germany. Panera was once the largest provider of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States.
History
Ken and Linda Rosenthal founded the St. Louis Bread Company in 1987 after Ken visited sourdough bakery-café La Boulanger in San Francisco at the insistence of his brother. After being fascinated with the process of sourdough making, he was trained to make sourdough under instruction of the owner, Roger Brunello for a year. The first location was opened in Kirkwood, Missouri. The Rosenthals invested $150,000 and received a $150,000 Small Business Administration loan.Au Bon Pain Co., a public company, purchased the St. Louis Bread Company in 1993 for $23 million.
In 1997, Au Bon Pain changed the company name to Panera, from a word that has roots in the Latin word for "breadbasket" and is identical to the word for "breadbasket" in Spanish and Catalan. The original name was retained for locations in Missouri. 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 the Au Bon Pain chain to the firm Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. for $78 million 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.
Expansion into Canada
In October 2008, Panera Bread expanded into Canada, opening locations in Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Oakville, and Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area.A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in February 2008, 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 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.
Ordering and delivery
In May 2014, Panera unveiled "Panera 2.0", a series of integrated technologies including new capabilities for digital ordering, payment, operations and 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.The company introduced delivery services in May 2018, servicing 897 cities in 43 states and employing its own drivers. According to the company, this created 13,000 jobs.
Rebranding, acquisitions and use of technology
2010s
Every Paradise Bakery & Café location was rebranded in September 2015 as Panera Bread.In the fourth quarter of 2015, Panera acquired a majority stake in Tatte Bakery & Cafe, a bakery-cafe concept chain with locations in the Boston area, later opening in metro Washington D.C.
On March 23, 2016, Panera opened its 2,000th location, a cafe in Elyria, Ohio.
In January 2017, Panera announced its food menu was free of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives.
JAB Holding Company acquired the company on July 11, 2017, for $7.5 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.
Panera divested Tatte Bakery & Café to Act III Holdings, LLC, owned by Shaich in January 2018.
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 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.
2020s
On October 28, 2020, Panera announced they would add pizza to their menu to increase dinner options for customers.Panera announced on August 25, 2021, that it had merged with Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels to form Panera Brands.
In August 2022, the company announced that it was testing the use of artificial intelligence in its drive-thru lanes via two locations in upstate New York. It used OpenCity's voice ordering technology, Tori. At the time of the announcement, roughly 45% of the chain's locations had drive-thru lanes. In making this move, the firm was joining other firms in the restaurant industry, like McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell, and it came on top of other uses of artificial intelligence at the chain.
In September 2022, Panera announced that legacy St. Louis Bread Co. locations outside St. Louis City and St. Louis County would be rebranded as Panera when remodeled, with locations in the inner core of the metro retaining the Bread Co. name. One location in St. Louis County is named Panera as it is a prototype of the "Next Gen" restaurant design.
In mid-2023, Panera moved its headquarters from Sunset Hills to Fenton, Missouri, downsizing the square footage by more than half. The move preceded two rounds of corporate layoffs in late 2023 and 2024.
In December 2023, it was learned that Panera Bread confidentially filed to go public again. The company was last publicly traded in 2017 before being acquired by JAB Holding for $7.5 billion.
In April 2024, Panera launched a major menu overhaul marketed as the "New Era at Panera," which the company described as the most significant menu transformation in its history. The update involved discontinuing categories such as flatbread pizzas and grain bowls to refocus on core offerings like soups, salads, and sandwiches. The change introduced over 20 new or enhanced items with larger portions and lower price points in a strategic effort to improve value and increase customer traffic.
On February 14, 2025, Ken Rosenthal, the founder of St. Louis Bread Company, died at age 81 due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.
In March 2025, the company named Paul Carbone its new CEO.
In July 2025, it was announced that the company was continuing a move begun in 2024 to a "par-baked" model for its restaurants, and closing down existing dough-making facilities and laying off employees. This model has restaurants receive partially-baked frozen bread which is finished in the store instead of freshly baked every day. The company has also been reportedly rolling back their "clean food guidelines" which previously advocated for stances against antibiotics and hormones, and for animal welfare.
On 28 January, Panera Bread was hit by a cyber attack, along with other companies including Bumble and Match. The company revealed that contact information was the data involved.