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Panera Bread Company is an American chain of bakery-café fast casual restaurants in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and operates as Saint Louis Bread Company in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Offerings include soups, salads, pasta, sandwiches, specialty drinks, and bakery items.

St. Louis Bread was founded by Ken Rosenthal in 1987 when he opened the first location in Kirkwood, Missouri. In 1993, Au Bon Pain Co. purchased the St. Louis Bread Company. In 1997, Au Bon Pain changed the company name to Panera, a word that has roots meaning "bread basket" in Latin. At the same time, the St. Louis Bread Company was renovating its 20 bakery-cafés in the St. Louis area. In May 1999, to expand Panera Bread into a national restaurant, Au Bon Pain Co. sold its other chains, including Au Bon Pain, which is now owned by Compass Group North America.Panera Bread moved into its new headquarters in Richmond Heights, Missouri in 2000. The company operates or franchises more than 1900 Panera Bread bakery-cafés in 46 states and 20 facilities that deliver fresh dough to the bakery-cafés every day. Panera Bread's CEO is Ron Shaich.

In the St. Louis area where it was founded, Panera Bread still operates under the name St. Louis Bread Company. The St. Louis metropolitan area has over 101 locations.

In 2015, there were 1,972 Panera outlets and stores, up from 1,880 the year before. 901 of those stores were company owned, while 1,071 were franchised. Panera opened its 2000th location in Elyria, Ohio on March 23, 2016.

In 2006 and 2007, Panera was the largest provider of free Wi-Fi in the United States. Many locations restrict the duration of free Wi-Fi to 30 or 60 minutes during peak hours.

In mid-2014, Panera unveiled "Panera 2.0," a series of integrated technologies to enhance the guest experience for all consumers no matter how they choose to use Panera. Panera 2.0 brings together new capabilities for digital ordering, payment, operations and, ultimately, consumption to create an enhanced guest experience for "to go" and "eat in" customers. A notable feature of Panera 2.0 involves interactive tablet kiosks, which the company calls Fast Lane, where customers may place an order and pay without approaching the counter. The kiosks consist of iPads. In addition to the kiosks, customers could also place orders and pay via an app on their own smartphone or tablet.

Menu items

Panera stylizes themselves as a peaceful "Bakery-Cafe" and offers a wide array of pastries and baked goods, such as croissants, bagels, cookies, scones, muffins and brownies. These, along with Panera's artisan breads, are typically baked before dawn by an on-staff baker. Some locations also participate in a program that donates their unsold baked goods to local charities after closing hours. Aside from the bakery section, Panera has a regular menu for dine-in or takeout that is broken down into the following categories:

Sandwiches

Panini

Pastas

Soups & more

Flatbreads

Salads

Side choices

Panera Kids

Fruit smoothies

Frozen drinks

Iced drinks

Coffee, tea, and lemonade

Espresso drinks

Lattes/ Hot Chocolate

Panera also has a selection of seasonal offerings, such as the Strawberry Poppy Seed Chicken salad offered during the summer season and the Roasted Turkey Cranberry Flatbread in the winter.

Panera announced the addition of more plant-based proteins, such as edamame and organic quinoa, to its menu on November 5, 2015. Being one of the first fast-casual restaurants to discuss plant-based proteins caused Fortune reporter Beth Kowitt to speculate that "other restaurants will likely follow the soup-and-sandwich chain's lead."