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About

Panera Bread Company is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The company operates as Saint Louis Bread Company in Greater St. Louis, where it has over 100 locations. Offerings include bakery items, pasta, salads, sandwiches, soups, and specialty drinks. The company, which also owns Au Bon Pain, is owned by JAB Holding Company, which is in turn owned by the Reimann family of Germany. Panera offers a wide array of pastries and baked goods, such as bagels, brownies, cookies, croissants, muffins, and scones. These, along with Panera’s artisan breads, are typically baked before dawn by an on-staff baker. Aside from the bakery section, Panera has a regular menu for dine-in or takeout including: flatbreads, panini, Panera Kids, pastas, salads, sandwiches, side choices, and soups, as well as coffee, espresso drinks, frozen drinks, fruit smoothies, hot chocolate, iced drinks, lattes, lemonade, and tea. During its final 20 years as a public company, from 1997 to 2017, it was the best performing restaurant stock, delivering an 86-fold return to shareholders. Panera was once the largest provider of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States. Many locations restrict the duration of free Wi-Fi to 30 or 60 minutes during peak hours.