If your next Panera Bread order tastes different, it’s not your tastebuds.
The company is shifting away from its longtime practice of baking bread on-site and announced plans to permanently close its fresh dough production facilities in areas where some locations are underperforming.
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A recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications notice revealed that the production facility in Brentwood, Missouri, plans to close by Sept. 12, with all 72 employees set to lose their jobs as a result.
According to Nations Restaurant News, four locations across the U.S. have already stopped operations as of June 24.
The Missouri location is the most recent to shut down amid the company’s transition to a new baking model over the past year. Panera aims to close all of its remaining fresh dough facilities within the next two years.
Previously, these fresh dough centers would mix and shape dough that was then sent to cafes for proofing and baking each morning.
Now, third-party vendors prepare the dough instead while following Panera’s recipes and instructions. This dough is partially baked, or par-baked, at these external sites, frozen, and then shipped to cafes, where final baking is completed as needed throughout the day.
The new method enables cafés to offer baked goods more flexibly and throughout the day, rather than only in the morning. Panera also believes this change will allow the company to expand into new locations that were previously difficult to serve due to delivery distance constraints for fresh dough.