Panera Keeps It Simple

The bakery-café chain is removing artificial ingredients and has upped its from-scratch recipes.

May 25, 2016

CHICAGO – Panera Bread Co. has begun a quiet revolution in each of its more than 2,000 locations to make food simpler. Last year, the company published a “No No” list of ingredients that will not be found in its menu items by the end of this year, including artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and sweeteners, Food Business News reports.

One example of the change has to do with its green goddess salad dressing. “Being a big company, you have someone else make your salad dressings for you because that’s what big companies do, and they do it really efficiently and the specs are right on, and, man, is it cheap,” said Dan Kish, head chef and senior vice president of food, during a panel discussion at the National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show that ended yesterday. “But two weeks ago, we started making our green goddess dressing in-house because I said, ‘If you can make a smoothie, you can make a dressing.’ It’s not as easy as it sounds, of course, but we have a pantry of ingredients that are wholesome and clean.”

“Our customers didn’t have a problem with our dressing,” he continued. “They didn’t even have a problem with artificial preservatives, necessarily… but we think the future is in eating better, and if I had to hitch my wagon to anything, I would want to be making better food and not mediocre food. I would want to make it accessible because this notion of accessibility, affordability and convenience [in fast food], none of that has changed.”

Converting Panera’s menu to simple ingredients might have sent shockwaves through the industry, but Kish said it fit right into what Panera stands for. “We didn’t have to change who we are,” he said. “All we had to do was just think a little more deeply about what that means in today’s terms and for today’s customer and today’s economics, and the answer sort of popped up. So this notion of knowing who you are and staying true to that is really the key.”

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