The Sandwich Swap Panera Bread Doesn't Mind Doing For Free

Swapping ingredients in your food at restaurant chains can often cost you more money than the original item itself since some chains don't subtract the cost of an ingredient should you ask for it to be omitted (I'm looking squarely at you, Taco Bell). If you request something else in its place, that ingredient's price then also gets added to the cost. At Panera, however, if you decide you want to swap out the protein in your sandwich for one key ingredient, the fast casual cafe doesn't charge you extra money and thus preserves the original price of the sandwich. 

That specific ingredient would be avocado, which should please you to know if you're a vegetarian. You can remove the protein from a sandwich, add avocado, and it'll stay the same price. This works online (I've tested it) and if there are sandwiches that already contain avocado and meat, you can take out the meat and simply add extra avocado for a double serving that still keeps the original price. Avocado almost always costs an extra premium due to the fact that it's generally an expensive ingredient, so we'll take the little luxuries where we can.

For people who don't want to feel taken for a ride, the avocado swap is a really nice one to know, but not all the sandwiches will taste all that great with avocado instead of meat. For example, the Smokehouse BBQ Chicken sandwich tastes great as is, with its smoked pulled chicken, cheddar, red onion, and barbecue sauce (served hot); but swapping the chicken for avocado won't make for the most harmonious bite. If you want a hot sandwich, the Toasted Frontega Chicken sandwich would likely be more of a match for the avocado swap. It would then feature avocado, mozzarella, tomatoes, red onion, basil, and chipotle aioli on black pepper focaccia.

In terms of cold sandwiches, replacing the turkey in the classic Turkey and Cheddar sandwich with avocado would be delicious, or nixing the bacon in the Tomato Basil BLT and replacing it with the rich green fruit would also work wonders. With the removal of cheese or aioli, you can easily make many of these sandwiches vegan as well, though Panera happily offers a number of vegan options. One last thing — this handy replacement also works for salads, Market Bowls, and Salad Stuffers (a bread roll stuffed with salad), so feel free to experiment with Panera's menu to your heart's content without the extra fee. With the way prices are, it's amazing we still find plenty of things on Panera's menu that are still affordable these days.