The Marching Virginians Habitat for Humanity House

At Panera Bread, we believe the universal spirit of bread is giving. Therefore, we do what we can to help others in need. We take a great amount of pride partnering with local community events! This past January we partnered with the Marching Virginians to help raise funds for their Habitat for Humanity house. During the opening events of our Blacksburg cafe, we collected donations for the Marching Virginians. Blue Ridge Bread decided to match the donations in full! We ended up donating $6000 to the Marching Virginians Habitat for Humanity House.

The house began to be built this spring. In just two short weeks the Marching Virginians finished hammering the last nail. This past Saturday, the house was dedicated to a late band member, Ryan "Stack" Clark. Panera Bread was honored during this heartfelt dedication. Pictured below is a picture of band director, Dave McKee, myself, and Michael Boswell, our Regional Catering Manager. I can not express how honored and truly proud Panera Bread is to be a part of this project!

Free Samples- Thursday June 11th!

Love Summer? We'll we do too! So to celebrate, this Thursday, June 11th we are offering free samples of our summer products at all our locations. Come out and sample a taste of summer.

Celebration of Summer!

Starting tomorrow, June 4th, we are introducing new summer inspired salads.

Our Strawberry Poppyseed salad is inspired by the season's freshest ingredients. It includes fresh romaine lettuce, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, pineapple tidbits, Mandarin oranges, toasted whole pecans, and our fat-free poppyseed dressing. It is one of my personal favorites!

We are also introducing our new Chopped Cobb salad. It includes all-natural black pepper mustard chicken, romaine lettuce, Applewood-smoked bacon, Gorgonzola cheese, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and tossed with a herb vinaigrette dressing. The Chopped Cobb salad is smokey, tangy, and hearty!

Stop by your local bakery-cafe to try one of these salads today!

Via Panera Catering Coordinator Meeting

Did you know... WE CATER!!! Panera Bread has an excellent catering department called Via Panera ! In every cafe we have a dedicated catering coordinator who is there to serve all your catering needs! Panera Bread offers a wide variety of breakfast and lunch assortments that are easy and affordable. Our catering packages are great for office meetings, school events, reunions, tail gating, or just a wonderful lunch for a picnic in the park.

Our catering department is the convenient and healthy choice for a meeting of five or a conference of five-hundred. Our breads are artisan quality and baked fresh every day, our meats are free of hormones and antibiotics, and our fruit and vegetable cut fresh every morning. In fact, Panera was recently voted one of the healthiest restaurants by Health magazine. Our menu gives you a variety of options (for breakfast, lunch or dinner!) and can be customized to any specifications.


On Wednesday, May 27th all Blue Ridge Bread’s Catering Coordinators gathered for their monthly meeting! The meeting was lead by the Senior Via Panera Catering Coordinators- Mark Croy of the Valley Region, and Michael Boswell of the Mountain Region. Check out these pictures of the bunch! They are a good looking crew! Next time you are in the cafe- don't forget to grab a catering menu!

New Store Opening, Memphis Tennessee

Our sister franchise, Delta Dough has opened a new bakery-café in the Laurelwood Shopping Center in Mid-Town Memphis. To celebrate the opening, we hosted a VIP Party for 500 of the movers and shakers in Memphis. We invited them to be the first to taste our freshly baked breads, pastries, soups, salads, and more! For all our opening events, we raised money for the Memphis Zoo. Panera Bread matched all the proceeds that were donated. We ended up donating $1200 to the Zoo! To celebrate our partnership we took a very “wild” approach to our VIP party. Check out the pictures of the bread animals!

Associate of the Month: Anthony Carchietta

At Panera Bread, we believe the heart of our business is our associates. We always try our best to make sure our associates are happy. Let’s face it… happy associates = happy customers! Therefore we want to take the time to recognize one of our rising stars; Mr. Anthony Carchietta.
Anthony is an associate trainer at our Winchester café. He started working at the café about five and a half months ago. Anthony goes above and beyond to make sure every single customer feels special. Often positioned in the dining room, Anthony can be found gabbing with the customers as if he has known them for years. In my recent visit to the Winchester café, I had the privilege to sit down and get to know Anthony a little better. Below I have outlined my conversation with Mr. Carchietta.

Who is your favorite customer?
“I really enjoy getting to know all of our customers, but I’d have to say Peter & Shelia are two of my favorites. Sometimes Peter will even bring his parrots to our patio to show us!”

What is your lifelong dream?
“I would like to become a History teacher.”

What do you do in your spare time?
“I enjoy reading…mostly non-fictional History books. Currently I am reading a book by Howard Zinn.”

What is your favorite food at Panera Bread?
“I love the Tomato Mozzarella Panini!”

What’s your life mantra?
“Two things, I would say;
1- Treat others with kindness.
2- Live everyday like it’s your last.”

If you had a theme song, what would it be?
“Unknown Soldier by Breaking Benjamin.”

Anthony, what can we say? We are thrilled to have such a positive, upbeat, personable guy like you work for Panera Bread!

Harrisonburg Panera Bread Management Team