Why Panera Bread Soup Never Really Tastes All That Fresh

Panera Bread is probably one of the first fast casual chains that comes to mind when you think about a soup-and-sandwich cafe. We've had plenty of experience trying new Panera sandwiches, but one somewhat murky fact about its soup is that it comes frozen in bags. This has previously been exposed by its employees and posted about on social media — it has also been confirmed by the company. In a thread in the r/Panera subreddit, an employee wrote, "I was recently told I cannot tell customers our soup is frozen."

So if you've ever noticed that it doesn't quite taste any fresher than a packaged version from the grocery store, your suspicions would be correct. That means menu items, like Panera's popular seasonal Autumn Squash soup, come in icy blocks that are then warmed up prior to serving. Despite that fact, when we ranked every soup at Panera, we still found plenty that we enjoyed — like its classic broccoli and cheddar, the perfect candidate for a bread bowl on a cold day. The fact that it's frozen might be disappointing, but at least some of the soups are still worth enjoying, in our opinion. (What you think about the monetary value of frozen soup might be different, however.)

One other fan-favorite Panera comfort food isn't made fresh in-store each day: the macaroni and cheese. Sorry to disappoint again, but it also comes in large frozen blocks. This was revealed some years ago when, according to USA Today, an employee posted a video online of how the mac is prepared. The entire frozen package is placed in a vat of boiling water, brought to temperature (much like reheating leftovers with the sous vide method), and served hot.

Another Panera employee shared how those bags of food are reheated: "We literally put it in the 're-thermalizer' (weird name for a thing of really hot water) and then we put the soups in a metal container then into our station that keeps it hot. The mac legit stays in there until we use it usually and we literally just cut the bag open and give it to u babe" (via Reddit).

And I hate to break your heart one last time, but Panera's bread is par-baked and shipped frozen to every location, too. If you want some homemade food, you're better off going to your local independently owned cafe, where it's much more likely that most of the food is made from scratch.