My review of Panera and the Unlimited Sip Club.

I got a free 2 month trial of Panera's Sip Club they are constantly shilling and I have opinions about it. I was planning to send this as feedback for the survey they send me via email almost every visit, but these frickers are so cheap you don't get anything for filling it out. Might as well get some DC instead.

The main problem with this whole thing is that the drinks at Panera just aren't very good. The quality of all the drinks (most of them!) I've had are middling at best. That immediately sets this thing up to fail, it doesn't matter how many options or how cheap the club is if the drinks aren't worth drinking.

The other main problem is that the selection is weird. There are a bunch of items, but they are almost all the same type of product with very few exceptions.

They may have 25 items, but let's break them down so you can see how little meaningful variety there is:

• Only 4 of those drinks are caffeine free, and 1 isn't available after 2 PM.

• 4 coffee options, but 2 of those aren't available after 2 PM (including the decaf!)

• If you want iced coffee, the dark roast is your only option, no decaf, hazelnut, or light roast.

• The hot tea has many flavors (6), but they only list the ingredients of the Br*tish Breakfast and they all taste pretty similar.

Another issue is the warped sense of value, they market it as "once you get 4 drinks, it pays for itself". However the drinks are an overpriced ripoff without the sip club, soft drinks are $3.19! If you pay that much for a soft drink, you might be r-slurred. This is the only place in town that serves soft drinks for anything over $3, and most places have a much wider selection of sodas. The coffee is $2.89 which isn't bad, if it wasn't gas station quality... None of the drinks they offer as part of the club are worth more than $2. This means you'd need to get 6 drinks a month to make it worth getting.

The frustrating part is they do offer some other nice interesting drinks, but they aren't part of the sip club. I understand why, they cost more to make, but they should have an option to get them for at least discounted. Even better would be making them free, but no refills, or even only allowing someone to claim 1 a week. Any of these solutions would allow someone to get these nice higher quality drinks as part of the sip club, without causing Panera to lose tons of money.

Also corporate has mandated that you get the cups with your order. They used to be right near the counter, however now they have to serve the empty cup with your food. This is brain dead. The time it takes to actually get the drink means your food is getting cold while getting your drink. It also means you can't enjoy your drink while waiting for the food, which takes time. This means the best way is to place 2 separate orders, one for just the drink first, and then another for the food. I don't need to explain why this is stupid. It also doesn't help that the app is slow as shit.

The program has one potential saving grace, the coupons. The idea is that every Saturday (and other days randomly) you get a coupon, not bad right? The problem is most of them suck; from a pathetic $2 off a Pick Two, to "Buy One Get One 50% Off" entrees, few are worth using. This means I usually just end up getting the Value Duets and using the entree coupons on them, as they are the only items that aren't a rip-off.

If Panera wants this to actually go somewhere it needs to do any one of the following:

• Reduce the cost of menu items to make eating here a better value.

• Make the coupons better, they don't need to be Burger King good, just better than what they are now.

• Allow the Sip Club to be used on premium drinks, whether that is only a discount, free with no refills, only so many a month, or some combination of those restrictions.

• Add more self serve drinks, specifically more soda and decaf options. Pepsi Zero, different Mt Dew or Pepsi flavors, fruit juices, iced decaf (and make the decaf coffee all day please!), and non caffeinated still lemonades would all be fine additions.

Note, it doesn't (nor should it) do all of these, that's unreasonable. However if they did even one of these it would be worth keeping the subscription. As it stands after my subscription ends, I don't plan to ever go back to Panera unless they fix the Sip Club or lower prices.

Also this is a small little tangent, but holy shit do a lot of the stuff they serve have too much sugar. All but 1 dessert item has more than 20g of sugar, and many are around ~50g! Also excluding the drinks that have 0g of sugar, most are around 50g a serving, I don't want to know how many people get refills on these... This place is one of the unhealthiest for desserts where I live, most donut places are much healthier! Kinda wild, it's not like the desserts really sell, so I'm not sure why they do this.

I am curious to see if other people view Panera differently these days so I'm going to make a poll. Do you go to Panera?