I was really looking forward to a new restaurant in my neighborhood. I have been to Panera 2 times now and both times the experience has not been very good. The first thing you see when you walk in the door is a little waist level window on the partition wall looking into the dining room. There is a table in front of the window that a manager has setup as their desk with all the normal things you would see on someone's desk like a coffee cup, papers, pens, a napkin, a printer and a laptop. Its like welcome to my office.\n\nOnce you get in line, and there has always been a line, you get a confused person manning the register. Both times the person was friendly but slow and poorly trained. The most frustrating thing is there are like 5 registers, and only 1 is usually being manned but there are people at most of the other registers doing something, but it not waiting on customers - they look confused like they are reading something.\n\nI will say the food was pretty good, so a glimmer of hope exists.\n\nIt can only get better. My recommendation is start with the manager that setup his office in the dining room - I suspect that is where the problem originates.