Description
Panera Bread is an American chain store of bakery-café fast food restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri.
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. As of 2020, the menu also includes flatbread pizzas.
Until 1999 and again from 2017 to 2021, the company also owned Au Bon Pain. Panera Bread is itself owned by JAB Holding Company, which is, in turn, owned by the Reimann family of Germany.
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, pizzas, warm grain bowls, panini, pasta, 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 was once the largest provider of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States.
