A Rant Nobody Expected

I got a bit of a wacky rant for you here today, so I hope you're feeling particularly goofy, quirky, and lord help me I'm gonna say it, maybe even a little zany. Panera Bread. I'm almost ashamed to admit it now, but I used to be an avid consumer of Panera Bread. For the better part of two years, it was my go-to post-workout meal, meaning I would have it like five times a week. I know I just watched that clip back in editing the fucking planet

smoothie logo faced the camera directly it almost looked like a Death Stranding monster energy ad right there. I'm not sponsored by Planet Smoothie I just got this because I was fucking thirsty is all. Yeah I would have Panera Bread like five times a week post-workout and even though it was more expensive than all the alternatives It felt worth it to me because it was a high quality meal or at least I felt like it was it tasted great It tasted fresh. So I really really enjoyed it

But over time it got in shitified and I know you hear this a lot for a ton of things It did get worse and in Panera's case it literally did change For the worst and I'm clearly not alone here in this thought because Panera sales and traffic has been declining you can look that up yourself And at least in my local areas like the Panera's I used to go to are Significantly less full They're far more empty. It's like

Call of Duty 4. 50,000 people used to eat soup here. Now it's a ghost town. It's because people are just choosing any other option really at this point. And I saw an article today and it's what sparked this rant here from me, made me put on the diaper and start whining, because the article does point out some very strong contributing factors for why Panera has been spiraling down the shitter but it also leaves out what I believe to be the biggest reason

for people's abandonment of this brand so I just kind of wanted to get into the weeds of it here and show you the article but before doing that I want to give a very special thanks to something special big thanks to to Old School RuneScape for sponsoring this video. I'm sure all of you know this by now, the first entirely new skill in Old School RuneScape history is launching today. That's right, sailing is finally here.

I think also a lot of you know that I am a hardcore RuneScape player. I started back in 4th grade and I finally maxed my account two years ago. And it is still one of my crowning gaming achievements. I am a huge old school RuneScape enthusiast and I am extremely excited to get my max cape back once Sailing drops because I'm going to have to 99 it to get my max cape again. So the race to world first 99 for Sailing starts today. I will be participating. Without exaggeration this is the biggest update in old school RuneScape history. Sailing offers a whole new way of exploring Gielinor here.

It's also a skill that's trained through a variety of means, whether it's salvaging shipwrecks, exploration, racing, port tasks, and it's one that of course can be experienced with your friends as well. You can have NPC crewmates or you can have your friends crew with you and there's new enemies new resources Just so much here that I'm extremely excited to sink my teeth into So if you've never played old school runescape now is the perfect time to start you can click the link in the description below I've always said it's a game with infinite content Like if you had to only choose one game to play for the rest of your life

You can't go wrong with old school runescape because you will literally never run out of things to do. So thanks again to Old School RuneScape for sponsoring this video. I'm super excited for sailing. Panera lost diners by cutting portions and staff. It's reversing course to win them back. Panera Bread has unveiled a turnaround strategy to reverse years of traffic declines. Basically goes on to recount the glory days but now it's kind of falling into the fucking back rooms here. And you don't typically hear a lot of glaze for Panera in the modern conversation when it comes to eating options. Now the article is not wrong here this is a contributing factor to Panera's decline

and fucking death spiral here. It has definitely lost consumers because of portion sizes and being extremely expensive for the morsels that you get. You'll pay like fucking 20 bucks for half a tiddly wink of a sandwich and a cup of soup. That's not a great deal unless that is the best goddamn half a sandwich and cup of soup of your life or it also comes with like a stripper that'll give you a lap dance for free. It's just not great

value and that's obviously played a huge role here but I think there's more than the article is talking about that I want to dive into the spaghetti and meatballs of. But before doing that let's go ahead and look at what the article highlights. It talks about the shrinking sandwiches and salad sizes and they're right those have shrunk a lot it feels like. These sandwiches are made for fucking ants. You can finish these in two big boy bites and you're paying so much money for the privilege of being able to have you know scraps and now Panera is trying to undo

that they're planning to reinvest into the business and undo many of the cost-cutting measures that they've taken imagine that it looks like cost-cutting measures kind of deteriorate businesses. Like the cycle is super simple. You see it all the time. A business comes up, it does really well because it's doing something different or it's delivering a high quality product that people want. Eventually it sells like Panera did and

then it's all about finding more and more ways to squeeze as much money out of it as they possibly can by looking at cost-cutting procedures. And when you start that process the quality of the product suffers and then people don't want it anymore because they were used to a better product. Why the fuck are they gonna settle for something worse? They'll just go somewhere else. Rinse and repeat forever. We've

seen this millions of times. Panera is the most recent example. So now they're, you know, they have this huge eureka moment. What if we unfuck it? Could that save us? And to me the answer is no. But I want to tell you their cute little plan that they've come up with here.

They call it Panera Rise. It's like a phoenix rising from the ashes of Panera. It's adorable to call it Panera Rise. It makes it sound like they're leading some kind of revolution here. Honestly just sounding like some shit out of The Hunger Games but the company aims to refresh its menu, focus on value, improve its service, and build new restaurants. That last one there is pretty ambitious

when people are already not choosing Panera, you're going to try and build more restaurants when the interest couldn't be lower. It is a bold strategy. Very, very ambitious indeed. Now I'll give some credit where credit is due. This is at least somewhat honest here saying we squeezed food costs, we squeezed labor. They did. He then also identifies himself as a reformed CFO. It's really about death by a thousand paper cuts it truly is. He then goes in to talk about like for example their salads where where

once it was all romaine in order to save money they started mixing half romaine half iceberg but nobody wants fucking iceberg. This next one was pretty interesting actually about the cherry tomato and the avocado. So apparently Panera is one of only a few restaurants that don't slice the cherry tomatoes in half which is apparently a decision they made like a conscious decision to save on labor costs. We make the guests chase the cherry tomato around the bowl. I don't call me a fucking Cro-Magnon if you'd like, how does that save on labor

costs to like take two seconds to slice a cherry tomato? Or in the case of the avocado they don't slice it or pre-slice it they give you like a halved full fucking avocado I guess but now it's like a huge, you know powerful panera rise moment where Next year, they're gonna start slicing the cherry tomatoes and avocados I just don't understand why they weren't in the first place I don't see how that saves on labor costs. Were they able to like avoid hiring more workers because of

Not slicing those like do they have dedicated cherry tomato and avocado slicers? I doubt it. I don't know. Or is it like a whole other training thing that they'd have to spend money on? I don't see why. I feel like anyone could probably slice a cherry tomato or avocado slice it. Like it's... I don't know. I don't really understand that at all. But that was pretty interesting to read. Then he addresses the portion sizes in some instances

We shrunk portions so guests would walk into our cafe to buy a sandwich That's gone up significantly in price with lower quality ingredients and a smaller size again Credit where credit's due that is pretty honest that is exactly right you can taste that it is Significantly lower quality food And you're still paying a premium price for it They didn't go on to toot their own horn about you know

Refreshing their menu delivering some new items and the article actually does make a mention of the charged eliminate Which was basically just serving up customers meth and apparently two people had died from it filed lawsuits against Panera Which I believe have been settled now, But yeah, this is their big strategy is unfuck it. But only kind of. They don't want to fully take their dick out of their ass. They are targeting these things, which are big deals. Like I don't want to downplay it, like these are obviously contributing factors for why people haven't been

choosing Panera as much. But one of the biggest things that people loved about Panera and what set them apart from a lot of their competition was their fresh baked bread. And guess what? That is not being changed. If you don't know, last year Panera set in motion the termination of their fresh dough facilities. So prior, Panera would have fresh dough delivered to their locations where it'd be basically nice,

fresh, beautiful bread loaves. And it's what people like myself love the most about it. But last year, in order to save money, they switched to a par-baked model, meaning that breads, bagels, and pastries arrive at stores partially baked outside and finished on-site and the company is trying to blow smoke up everyone's asses

about you won't notice a difference in taste or quality which is just a load of barnacles that's just fucking horseradish you do notice a difference in the quality of that product and if you just look at the timeline I think it's pretty clear there's a strong correlation that when Panera was at its best at its peak it had 24 fresh dough facilities across the US and now while it's in its decline

they only have nine which will soon be reduced to zero over the next two years. Like, I think it should be pretty obvious that people liked the fresh dough being a defining feature of Panera. And they also then say that of the hundreds of jobs that are affected, they're trying to offer other positions to help them find work through Panera, and that Panera is saying that the strategy will open the door to new locations in areas that were once too far from its fresh dough facilities, thus fewer logistical barriers could mean faster growth for the chain and fresher bagels at 4pm if

the company's plan actually works, which I don't think it will. Well, rather, I don't think it should. And this is the biggest thing to me, and why the article made me want to rant about it, because it is highlighting some contributing factors for why people don't like Panera anymore. And they're very legitimate factors.

But in an effort from the CFO here, the reformed CFO, to try and puff up his chest and be like look at me I'm the good guy listen to all of you listen I I hear all of you plebeians and we are gonna do our best to undo all of these terrible changes we've done over the years. He's saying all of these things and he is making some changes it seems but one of the biggest things is still actively implemented which is a cost-cutting procedure which is closing all of their fresh dough facilities, meaning that there's still not going to be any of that fresh dough delivered

there.

They switched to a model that is significantly cheaper with a significantly lower quality product. So we can flap his gums till the cows come home about how he's, you know, rolling everything back that made Panera so bad recently. But the truth is behind the scenes they are still ultimately focused first and foremost on that bottom line and

saving money, pinching pennies everywhere they can, and that is coming at the cost of a high-quality product which was once that fresh dough facility delivered to these locations for the fresh products that I and many others liked Panera for. That is not changing. That is not being unfucked. I just don't see this being enough. It's certainly not for me to want to march back into a Panera right away. Oh, you're cutting the cherry tomatoes and avocados now?

Holy fuck, I'm out the door! I can't wait to get to my local Panera to get some of that. Like, yeah, maybe the portion size is a little increased too but the quality is still the same and it's still expensive what the fuck is the point? It is still worse than it was because of their biggest cost-cutting measure which is closing all of these fresh dough facilities because it's gonna save them so much money switching to this cheaper

method and this worse product. That has not changed. Thus I will still not be going to Panera Bread as my first choice for any kind of meals anytime soon. I don't see why anyone would. It's still not great value. This shit is just so stupid every time. A business gets bought and then immediately the mission becomes cost-cutting to make even more money off of it. And in doing so, ruining the core defining features of it.

In this case, the fresh fucking dough. That was a massive selling point of it to consumers, and it's gone. And it's still gone, even though they're trying to put out all these big PR fluff pieces about like, we've listened, we're rolling things back.

You're rolling some things back sure but not everything not the actual biggest cost-cutting thing that you implemented very recently which is closing all of these that is still in effect so to me this is all just meaningless marketing speak here to try and desperately claw back some consumers that have lost all their faith in this and desperately claw back some consumers that have lost all their faith in this

brand and anyway I just wanted to rant about this a little bit that's it see