Laid off from Panera.

What Panera layoffs have meant for employees

If your notice came from a Fresh Dough Facility, you're among the plant workers behind most of Panera's WARN filings, which were filed one market at a time. Panera has been closing the plants that mixed dough for its cafes since early 2024 and moving the work to outside producers who partially bake to its recipes and ship to cafes for finishing. Current and former bakery employees told Nation's Restaurant News their worry reached past their own jobs to what the change would do to the food.

The company put the rest of the plan on the record in April 2025, telling Nation's Restaurant News it would close its remaining fresh dough facilities over the next 18 months to two years. It had closed at least eight by then and had nine left, down from 24 in 2016. Plants closed in 2024 had been described as underperforming ones, Restaurant Dive reported, but the April plan took in every plant still open. The next closing would come "in the coming weeks," Brooke Buchanan, the company's chief corporate affairs officer, told Restaurant Business. In July 2025 Panera said it expected the shift completed sometime in 2026. The closings by then had already reached Lenexa, Greensboro, two in California, and sites in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Colorado and Washington. Those market-by-market announcements had already resulted in hundreds of layoffs, Restaurant Business reported.

The notices are where the terms actually appear, and they aren't identical. Missouri's set the Brentwood plant to close by September 12, 2025 with 72 jobs, in a letter from chief people officer Alycia Gonzalez, and Michigan's, filed May 13, put Romulus at 66 jobs ending July 25. Both letters called the closure permanent. Panera's statement on the Brentwood closing called St. Louis "our hometown" and said it valued its team members there especially.

The corporate rounds are a separate record with separate terms. The memo behind the October 2024 round, which Nation's Restaurant News quoted, said Panera needed to "further align our support structure with our strategy" and to bring its corporate teams "closer to our cafes," positioned to support the general managers it called the heart of its culture. One former employee laid off in 2023 told the same outlet that early reports had more people going in the second round than in the first.

If you received a notice, two things are worth doing when you compare it with the public record. Panera stopped filing with the SEC after a Form 15 in July 2017, so there's no annual report to check for headcount or severance charges the way there would be at a public company. That was the year Luxembourg-based JAB Holding took ownership of the chain. And because the support listed varies from notice to notice, if you received a letter you can compare yours against what Ohio's notice spelled out and ask whoever signed it about anything yours leaves out. Filing details for the states Panera files in sit on our Missouri, Maryland, Ohio and New Jersey pages. Panera RISE, the turnaround announced on November 18, 2025, sets four pillars and a sales target the chief executive put above $7 billion by 2028, and Nation's Restaurant News reported the bread switch sits outside that plan. The same announcement said Panera would put more staff into front-of-house service at its cafes. The chief executive defended the bakery change as a way to help employees meet demand and prevent shortages, and Nation's Restaurant News quoted him conceding that Panera "didn't do a good enough job" explaining it.

A sourced history of Panera layoffs

• 2026, Panera layoff notices in Massachusetts, Illinois and Maryland

  Panera's 2026 notices began with 92 jobs at Franklin, Massachusetts in January and 119 at Elk Grove Village, Illinois in February. A March 17 notice that WMAR reported set the Jessup, Maryland bakery to close between May 20 and 22 with 118 jobs, part of the switch to a par-baked model.

• 2025, Panera WARN notices in seven states

  WARN notices for 2025 layoffs came from California, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Michigan and New Jersey, among them 114 jobs in Orlando, filed in May.

• October 2024, Panera corporate support center cuts

  Panera eliminated jobs and reassigned roles at its St. Louis and Newton, Massachusetts support centers, according to an internal memo Restaurant Dive viewed. Developers, engineers and IT specialists were among those Nation's Restaurant News named, and employee LinkedIn posts described customer care and project management jobs.

• November 2023, Panera corporate staff cut

  About 300 corporate employees were laid off, Restaurant Dive reported, as Panera prepared for an initial public offering, and Nation's Restaurant News put the cut at 17 percent of corporate staff.

What to do if you're laid off from Panera

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Panera's biggest hubs: Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Panera's hub states run: Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.