I like Panera food. And I can see them working in the kitchen.
I worked at a Panera for over a year, mostly as a delivery driver but also worked “back of house” doing food prep or the dining room bringing food to tables and cleaning up tables or at the specialty coffee and smoothie prep station or even in a pinch as a cashier in between or when we had more drivers than needed or had no deliveries or was called in to fill in.
Panera no longer have their own delivery drivers and now use Uber Eats or Door Dash which is a shame because I used to check and QC all my orders before delivering and did things like give the customer free cookies (approved by my manager) if the order was late and carried a box of extra utensils, napkins and condiments if needed.
But what you see behind the counter at Panera is mostly just the assembly and reheating.
All the soups and mac & cheese come frozen in plastic bags that are put in a thermalizer (bain marie) in morning and throughout the day as needed, heated in the bag to temp and then transferred to food prep counter that you see. The mac and cheese is also microwaved before being served.
The chicken used for sandwiches and salads (all the same chicken BTW) also comes frozen in plastic bags and thawed in cold water ice baths. Lunch meats and cheese slices are pre-packaged and not sliced on site. The chicken salad is premade from what I remember but the tuna salad is “mixed” on site from bags of tuna and ingredients from a standard recipe. The only thing I would say that is actually cooked on site is the bacon which is put on special racks and baked in the same oven as the bread after the bakers have left their overnight shift.
Produce - onions, tomatoes, avocado, etc., come in fresh and are sliced on site. Salad greens come in plastic lined refrigerated boxes. Fruit for salads and the apples used as sides come in fresh – strawberries, grapes are washed and sliced on site and the whole apples get a cold water “bath” before going out to the line.
Drinks like ice teas and lemonades are prepared from a large plastic container of concentrate and mixed with cold tap water. Salad dressings come in plastic jugs.
The eggs for the breakfast sandwiches come in whole in the shell but are pre-cooked (scrambled or sunny side) on the line ahead of time and kept warm to save time, but hard-boiled eggs used in the Cobb Salad come pre-packaged and are just sliced on site.
All the breads, baguettes, bagels and cookies are baked on site, but the dough comes daily and is pre-prepared, the only thing the bakers do aside from putting into the oven is scoring and or decorating, icing the seasonal cookies for example. Other bakery items like muffins or coffee cakes come frozen and are thawed the night before.
Don’t get me wrong, even after having worked there, I still like the food, it is “fresh” and tasty and at least at the store where I worked, cleanliness and food safety were strictly adhered to, and still get it once and a while but there is no “kitchen” per se. This is typical for all “fast casual” and most chain restaurants.