Panera Bread - Ottawa

I was very disappointed with my last visit to this restaurant. While the food was good, the overall condition of the restaurant was subpar. Many of the seats had torn material and the cleanliness was not up to par. The floor was also quite dirty.

This place has lost its way. Was one of the best places in the area. Come in, sit down and enjoy a nice meal. But no one is leaving. The meal also in the restaurant is served in a pull-out bag. Plastic forks, take... Terrible. The staff has no experience with people because it is empty. They stand around the laughing in the kitchen, do not know how to help or even care if you are there. A business that thinks it can just change, operate Uber and survive? It's 90% of what made this a good place. Shame on your guys for not understanding or simply thinking Uber benefits Trump service and atmosphere.

Ordering at the counter was very confusing. We tried to order a half sandwich and a salad, but the cashier was unable to ring it up correctly, resulting in a higher price than if we had ordered the items separately. The cashier seemed flustered and said it was too complicated. The meal itself was average. We were not informed about any add-ons for the sandwich, which I later discovered were only available online. The sandwich would have been better with mustard. Additionally, most BLT sandwiches are toasted, but this one was not. I'm not sure if it could have been toasted, but due to the ordering difficulties, I decided to just eat it as it was prepared. Panera used to be a great place, but this experience was disappointing.

The necklace used to be one of our go spots before the pandemic. So today our first business visits were quite some time. My comment is not so much about this chain above all, but other similar restaurants. What this visit to Panera...to Huntclub things like cleanliness, the tables are wiped on all, on the floors of the look as if they were cleaned with a dirty mop, to bad food presentation to general service was disappointing. As we remember, the serving tablets are replaced by a brown paper bag, almost like a walkable customer you are encouraged to leave with your pull-out pocket in your hand. But the most annoying thing was a constant beeping from the front door fire alarm panel that flashed (TEST) at the front door. Previously, the serving bowls, the bowls for soup plates for sandwiches. Sad Covid left it ugly brand. But! and this is the great, and it seems to apply almost all restaurants of this kind and size. Go in the customer those who want my self something familiar, are pushed by the various delivery services such as “Skip the Dishes”Uber or Door Dash. It seems that more effort is made for the phone in orders than for customers who prefer to personal service. Can I come back? I don't think so, and that applies to all other similar restaurants. Instead of going from the various delivery services, they should all be referred to as skipping the line. Thanks for the memories.

It was a very disappointing visit. I would give 0 out of 5 if I could. All the staff were working at the kitchen, nobody was attending at the cashier to wait for orders, while there were about 3-4 customers lining up until one customer...stepped up to the kitchen to complain, from placing order to pick up order, took my friend 20 minutes to wait for it. I asked the staff to provide something to sanitize the table and chairs, she handed me a piece of cleansing wipe, I wasn’t expect her to come out to clean the table for us and I expected it’s self-serving but one piece of cleansing wipe for one table and four chairs were not helpful enough. My order was a sausage, cheese and scrambled eggs on ciabatta with Americano coffee. They didn’t have sausage so I chose ham as substitute. When I picked up my order, I asked why my coffee was half empty while my friend also had Americano, hers was full. The staff explained my coffee was based on combo size so it should be smaller as they didn’t have smaller size cup so they gave me a regular cup instead, she offered me to add some hot water to fill up the cup if I’d like, I was surprised she said that, it wasn’t a good answer to brush off your unhappy customer, to be honest adding one extra pump of coffee doesn’t worth a penny, I’m really not greedy for extra coffee, I wasn’t happy how she dealt with it, don’t forget Panera Bread used to offer “free refill”, why she didn’t explain to me the first thing about running out of small paper cups and made me confused with the amount of coffee. Of course I rejected her “offer”. My combo included tax was $9 something, the ciabattas was the same size as the breakfast sandwich you can get from McDonald but you probably only pay $6 for the combo. The ciabatta and coffee didn’t taste any better than McDonald’s. There are many ways to make things better before disappointing their customers. I used to love going to Panera Bread with my friends but I’m afraid that it would be my last time. The pandemic already affecting many retail businesses, I bet they are struggling but still trying to best to welcome the returning customers after the reopening but I doubt that this restaurant is getting ready for this.