What The Heck Happened To Amarillo’s Panera Bread?

When Panera bread announced that it would be opening its first location in good ol' Amarillo Texas, there was so much talk about it. And understandably so, we would finally get our fill of baguettes and bread bowls from a franchise that is famous for the quality of its bread.

From its very conception though, Amarillo's Panera Bread was plagued with problems. It took forever for the Panera Bread location off of Soncy to be built, having been teased as far back as 2020. Its first supposed opening date was set for Fall 2021 but got pushed back to May 15th of 2022.

And when it finally opened, they were unable to keep up with the demand from the opening crowd, creating some pretty long waiting times, which is pretty understandable considering it was their first week.

But as weeks turned to months, and months turned to weeks, the problems did not get any better. In fact, they got worse..... much worse. Months after its initial opening, Panera bread still could not keep up with the demand and found itself with issues regarding employees and management.

Alleged sexual harassment, a non-respondent HR, and a general manager who was arrested for ten counts of child pornography all likely contributed to the downfall of the franchise location which seemed to be troubled from the beginning.

And if you go to Google and read Panera Bread's reviews now, it's not very good......

It takes a bit of effort to find a few good reviews of this place and even the good ones are sprinkled with minor complaints.

The Soncy location currently has a 1.9-star rating on Google, and a 1.0-star review on yelp, leaving it among Amarillo's lowest-reviewed locations.

It was so disappointing seeing, Amarillo's Panera Bread going from one of the most hyped-up places, to now being one of the most despised franchises in Amarillo. Hopefully, we can see a comeback of this franchise in the future.