Panera Bread bakes its own bread daily and builds a fast-casual counter around it, from breakfast sandwiches to whole loaves sold by the piece. Soups, salads, a full espresso bar and a rewards program built on personalized offers round out the format.
The chain traces back to a Boston bakery merger and a buyout of a small St. Louis chain. A later change of ownership took it off the stock market entirely.
Panera Bread History
Ron Shaich ran a small Boston cookie shop. Louis Kane had founded Au Bon Pain a few years earlier as a French-style bakery chain. Shaich folded his own shop into it in 1981. The two built the bakery-cafe chain through the decade that followed. Au Bon Pain bought the Saint Louis Bread Company in 1993. The price came to twenty-four million dollars. Ken Rosenthal had built the twenty-cafe chain in St. Louis six years earlier.
Shaich took over day-to-day management of the smaller chain and began reworking its menu, its bread and its store layout. Saint Louis Bread Co. signage gave way to the Panera Bread name market by market starting in 1997. Au Bon Pain Co. sold its original division in 1999 and renamed itself Panera Bread Company, putting the whole business behind the newer brand. Franchising alongside company-owned stores pushed the chain’s cafe count past a thousand within a few years. Panera became one of the shapes fast-casual dining took across the following decade.
JAB Holding Company owns Keurig Dr Pepper, Peet’s Coffee and Krispy Kreme. It bought Panera Bread for $7.5 billion in 2017 and took the chain private. The deal closed that July with roughly 2,000 bakery-cafes already carrying the name across 46 states and Ontario. Shaich stepped back from daily operations soon after the sale closed. Panera now trades from more than 2,200 US locations, still built around bread baked on-site and a rewards program members can join for free.
Panera Bread Menus & Details
Four pages carry the detail behind the counter and the ovens, each one keeping facts in one place instead of spreading them across the site.
Panera Bread Menu Prices
The full board appears on the Panera Bread menu prices page, with every item’s calorie count sitting beside its price.
Panera Bread Secret Menu
Off-menu combinations and the wording to ask for them sit on the Panera Bread secret menu page.
Panera Bread Allergen Menu
Milk, egg, wheat, soy and tree nut declarations for each item are listed on the Panera Bread allergen menu page.
Panera Bread Fall Menu
Pumpkin-flavored drinks and bakery items added each autumn appear on the Panera Bread fall menu page.