PapillionBusinesses.com is here with…

John Donahue.

What is your role here?

I’m the Director of Retail Operations.

What did you do before, and how did you get into this position?

I’ve been in the restaurant industry ever since I was 13 years old. I have a degree in hotel restaurant management. My father was in the business, and so it’s just something that’s always been in me. I’ve been with Panera now for a little bit over a year, and I’m just really enjoying my time with the company.

There have to be so many interesting things to your job. What are a couple that you’d like to tell us about?

Yeah, so I emphasize a lot with our teams is what I’ve always enjoyed about the restaurant industry is that it’s the same thing every day and it’s different every day. So we can set ourselves up for success by preparing and doing all of the paperwork pieces of it. But as soon as the doors open up, we have no idea what’s going to happen. So for me, that’s always what I’ve really enjoyed, because you have the opportunity to be able to ensure that we can be successful if you do the right steps. And Panera does a great job of providing the tools for our teams to be incredibly successful.

Why did you pick Papillion and the second location right here?

When we were thinking about Papillion, it’s continuing to grow. There’s been a lot about Sarpy County, the continued development of extending the highway systems to ensure that people will be able to get in. For this area in particular, proximity to downtown and I-80 allows for guests to be able to come in from all different sides. We have a second location that has been incredibly successful for us. The partnership with the city has really allowed for us to feel like we’re a part of the community, and so we’re really striving to be able to continue to look at different opportunities within the state of Nebraska. And with this expansion piece here in Papillion, it just offered us a great opportunity to be able to introduce our new small-box buildout for Panera.

How did you learn about the Papillion Tower District?

We have a team of people that are consistently…

So you knew this was just the right place for you to do it.

Yeah, so we have people that continue to look at new areas that are continuing to develop. And so with Papillion, this city is just continuing to grow. And we’re just super excited to be able to be a part of it.

There are so many wonderful things about your food… the different kinds of food, and your commitment to having good food. Could you tell us a little bit about that and maybe a couple of your favorite items?

Yeah, there are so many unique things. I think that because we have a drive-through, I think that a lot of people automatically assume that we’re a fast-food restaurant, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Our breads here inside the café, we bake them here. We bake inside of our oven all of our bagels, so they’re warm. We cook baguettes throughout the course of the day, so our guests get them hot. And every single one of our sandwiches… breakfast, lunch, or dinner…salads, they’re all made fresh to order. So they’re not sitting somewhere, or they’re not on a rack already warmed up. Everything is made fresh. And so if you want to modify something, if there’s an allergen, what’s great about Panera is that we can accommodate that for our guests.

I think the new French Dipper that we have is probably one of my favorite ones. We ran it last year, and because of the popularity, we brought it back to be able to ensure that our guests were able to get it again. I just think that’s such an awesome thing and just really appreciate it.

I think any one of our sweets…like, I’m a sucker for some sweets. I think that’s also just something that’s really awesome that we are able provide to our guests throughout the whole entire day…anything from a brownie to a chocolate croissant to our blueberry muffins, really what you prefer. you have the ability to be able to choose.

On Tuesdays, we have Bagel Pack Tuesdays which offers a baker’s dozen at a discounted price, and it’s just an awesome thing. Then we run programs like our sip club that allows for our guests to be able to come in and refill their beverages throughout the course of the whole entire day. And with this new location here, we have a bean-to-cup machine which actually grinds the coffee beans fresh every single order for you. This is something that the company is looking at being able to potentially get into all of our locations, as the success of this piece of equipment has really shown some great things for our guests that are coming in, just from a quality standpoint and a freshness standpoint.

The bean-to-cup feature here, is it in other Paneras?

Only our small box, so there’s very few of them currently and we’re one. I don’t know the exact number of small boxes that we have, but I know that this was like #4 on the build-out of it. We may have more than that currently that are open, but this piece of machine is something that we hope to be able to get across our whole group of corporate-run stores.

Is it the only one in Nebraska?

It is the only one in Nebraska. So it’s super unique for the city of Papillion to be able to have this bean-to-cup machine. We do serve fresh coffee all day. It’s brewed, but we serve our dark roast and our hazelnut coffee after 3 p.m. and we brew it every hour, so you have a fresh pot of coffee every hour. This one, it’s brewed for you exactly how you like it all day long.

It’s one of the things I like about Panera. When I go get a cup of coffee, it’s always good.

Yeah.

It’s not overheated or anything like that or been around too long.

Yeah, we focus a lot on freshness, right? You’ll see that with our food, but we really emphasize that with our coffee. I think the first thing that our guests really come in for is a fresh cup of coffee. It is something that we focus on a lot as a restaurant group…to really make sure that it’s served hot and fresh all day long. And if a guest would like a cup of decaf after 2:00, we will most certainly brew it for them.

That’s nice. And Panera does a lot of community work and cares about the communities they’re located in. Could you please tell us about some of these activities?

Yeah, so we have donation. At the end of every night, we partner with local charity groups and organizations where we will donate our leftover breads, bagels, and sweets to ensure that we’re not just discarding something that could feed the community. The product that we make inside of here is good for the day, and so we want to make sure that product goes somewhere and is able to feed somebody. So that’s one of the things that I think is unique about our organization. And just also like today with the ribbon cutting here, we had several different city council members that came to join us for that. And I think that emphasizes just what the community represents and what Panera means to the community. We participate in any event that we’re contacted about. We run a lot of fundraisers for local communities where they can either contact us or they can contact our fundraising department… where they can come in and have an event with us. And then part of the proceeds from that evening will be donated to that organization. So local schools, community centers, anybody that would like to be able to participate has the ability to sign up for it at any one of our Panera Bread locations across the country.

So they can choose the location and the time if it happens to be available.

Yeah, and so they can reach out and they can say, “We’d like to be able to have an event from 4 to 8. This is the charity or the school, and we’d like to be able to have a fundraiser. There’s going to be, say, 50 or 100 people.” And then a percentage of the proceeds go towards that organization.

Is there a question or something I haven’t asked you or some event coming up that you would like people to know about?

No. I think Panera is continuing to look at opportunities within the state of Nebraska and being able to grow our presence within the community, to be able to get them our food that we believe is the best that’s out there. And so I just appreciate you coming out and wanting to be a part of this today. We had so much fun this morning. We gave out 100 Free You Pick Twos for a Year to the first 100 guests that came in our building.

I was 105.

We actually had somebody that was outside last night at 12:30 in the morning.

Oh, my goodness.

And so they waited 5 1/2 hours for the doors to open this morning. And so it was awesome to be able to see. We had…I think it was 30 people that were standing outside before we opened, and we got to our first 100 guests within the first two hours this morning. So it was, again, I think every time that you open up a location, you’re always questioning, “Are we going to be busy? Are we going to have guests that are going to show up? Are they going to enjoy what it is that we’ve put a lot of energy and effort into?” And today is just another example of how the community of Papillion really stepped up, and we’re excited about our doors being opened and being able to serve our food out of a second location.

The community is very supportive at so many different levels. We’re very happy that you’re here.

Thank you.

And I’m very happy you’re in this location too.

Thank you.

There was so much speculation about what might go in here. People were crossing their fingers for different things, so we’re very happy to have you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Visit the new location at:

Panera Bread
117 W Cedardale Rd.
Papillion, NE 68133

Learn about the Unlimited Sip Club here:
https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/mypanera/subscription.html