When Was Panera Founded?

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.

What was Panera Bread called before?

The North American sandwich chain Panera Bread began as a single cookie shop called the Cookie Jar, which opened in downtown Boston in 1981. The next year, the shop's founder, Ron Shaich, merged the Cookie Jar with a struggling French bakery called Au Bon Pain.

How did Panera Bread begin?

Panera began in 1980 as a single, 400-square-foot cookie store in Boston, Massachusetts, and is now a leading restaurant brand with more than 2,300 bakery-cafes in the United States and Canada, 140,000 associates and annual systemwide sales in the billions.