Panera Bread has announced another round of corporate layoffs just ten months after a previous 17% cut of its corporate staff. According to an internal memo viewed by NRN, the corporate restructuring again directly affects Panera’s support teams in the St. Louis office, including developers, engineers, IT specialists, talent recruitment staff. The exact number of employees affected remains unknown, though the announcements were split between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2.
“To position Panera for future growth and success, we need to further align our support structure with our strategy,” the memo reads. “As we evolve and grow, so must our ways of working…. We must change how we operate to remove silos and simplify leadership reporting lines to make faster decisions and drive more consistent execution. And finally, we must ensure our corporate teams are closer to our cafes, and well positioned to support and empower our general managers, who are at the heart of our culture.”
Panera clarified that the “internal organizational realignment” plan is part of an ongoing strategy to simplify operations and support general managers. The layoffs also only affect corporate-level workers on the support teams, not franchisees or store-level staff.
The St. Louis, Mo.-based fast-casual brand will also offering impacted employees a severance package that includes severance pay, pay for all accrued and unused PTO, healthcare support, and career services.
A former employee who was laid off during Panera’s last round of restructuring last November said that “early reports” indicate that more people were laid off than the last time, when more than 300 people were let go. At that time, internal memos at Panera said that that layoffs were part of a reorganization ahead of a planned IPO, the plans for which were originally announced in May 2023. There has been no recent update on Panera’s plans to go public.
There will also be more layoffs following this round of restructuring. According to a WARN Act notice filed in Norcross, Ga., the Atlanta-area fresh dough manufacturing facility will be closing in November, affecting 86 employees, and as previously predicted by current employees. This would be the fifth FDF that has closed this year, including ones in Houston; Chandler, Ariz.; Seattle and Denver.
In areas where FDFs are shutting down, the company is switching to a par-baked operations model, where bakery items are partially pre-made off-premises, frozen, and then finished in the oven at a Panera café. According to current Panera employees, Panera cafes in the Nashville area and in Canada will be switching to the par-baked model soon.
Panera did not respond to requests for comment regarding the impending FDF closure in Atlanta.
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