Why Panera Bread's Crispani Flatbread Pizza Was A Total Failure

Panera Bread is best known for its variety of quality soups, but some of you may remember a time when Panera execs got it into their heads that the restaurant should be making pizza. Unfortunately, that idea didn't last long. Flatbread pizzas were removed from most menus in 2024, but you can still find them haunting dead links on the Panera website like tasty ghosts. What you might not be aware of is that the fast-dining eatery had an even earlier attempt at pizza that went awry back in 2006.  Dubbed the "Crispani," it was only sold after 4 p.m. and seemed destined for failure almost from the beginning.

This was Panera Bread's first attempt at entering the pizza market, so it was a surprising and hype-inducing move. The enthusiasm didn't last, though. The problem was that the pizza was labor-intensive to make and took a long time to cook, cut, and serve. For workers who were already trained in quick sandwiches, this was a pretty big pivot. It was also a major change for Panera fans who expected to get their food faster and hotter than could be managed with these pizzas. Although the Crispani was beloved by many, its sales numbers began to decline while ingredient costs continued to rise. So, when absolute disaster struck, the cheesy, crunchy experiment was already on its way out.

Although Panera is not exactly a fast food restaurant, many customers saw it as a place to grab a quick bite, and fast pizza sounded like quite the treat. The pizzas were cooked in stone ovens and made with fresh dough so that you got a quality pie every time. The initial release offered six kinds, including pepperoni, wild roasted mushroom, and sweet sausage with apple. The marketing wasn't exactly robust, but it was released just before National Pizza Month in October as a popular addition.

So, the Crispani enjoyed moderate success at first. People who tried it raved about it online, and some still fondly remember it even now. One Reddit user said, "Oh God those Crispanis were what got me hooked on Panera," while another noted wistfully, "I still think about it to this day." However, in 2008, just two years after launching, Crispanis were eliminated from the menu, becoming yet another discontinued Panera item we'll probably never see again. It all happened so fast, mostly due to the marketing and production challenges. Low profit margins were not planned for when dreaming up the Crispani, and that fact was something shareholders ended up getting downright litigious about.

If you had to attribute the Crispani's downfall to one word, it would be "lawsuit." This wasn't some little dispute as to whether or not Panera uses fresh-baked bread, either. In January 2008, shareholders sued Panera, saying that they had been misled about how profitable and successful the Crispani actually was. By all accounts, it was popular in the beginning, but the suit alleged that its growth had never been sustainable, given the high price of ingredients and labor. Making it was already so costly that this was enough to put a final nail in the coffin, and Crispanis were no more by February. Panera settled the dispute in 2011 for $5.75 million, so we may never know just how unprofitable Crispanis actually were.

When it attempted pizza again in 2020, Panera made some important changes so that its flatbread would be a lot more successful. It used a thicker dough that cooked faster, so you'd have a very quick pizza that retained heat better. It also had better online marketing to spread the word. For those who remembered the Crispani, this was a very welcome return. However, when execs simplified the menu in 2024, flatbreads simply didn't make the cut. Who knows if we'll ever see pizza at Panera again.