One viral video showing how Panera Bread makes their mac and cheese has taken the internet by storm — a thick, sickly, pasta shell storm.
The release of the video apparently also led to the firing of a staff member.
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The video was first shared on the social media app TikTok.
The video was posted by a Panera Bread employee and quickly drew widespread attention as it revealed how they go about preparing their mac and cheese in Panera Bread establishments.
The process has left people a little agitated, to say the least!
The video shows the employee removing a small packet of frozen mac and cheese (with nails so long that it is genuinely impressive that she can work in food preparation without snapping them!) before submerging the packet into boiling water.
Following that, the bag is cut open and poured into a bowl.
Uber facts shared the video to their twitter page, and the video has since gained over 11 million views, and over 60, 000 likes!
People were quick to slam the restaurant for the video, outraged at the way that their food is prepared.
The video ends with the employee giving the bowl a little shake and serving it up.
Some of the disgusted responses to the video included:
“Lmaooo I worked in a physical therapy office and that’s how we heat up the heating pads lmaooo”
“Thank God I don’t eat at Panera bread or other chain restaurants.”
With one former Panera employee saying, “As a former Panera employee my senior year of high school, I can confirm this is 100% real.”
Don’t worry folks, it gets worse.
“Even worse, at my location, we were REQUIRED to mix Coca-Cola and other sodas with the cleaning chemicals,” the comment continued, “because it ‘helps clean the pipes.'”
However, people were quick to point out that this is how most fast food is prepared.
Comments on the video quickly changed to people essentially asking what people really expected from fast food.
“What y’all thought somebody auntie was in the back cooking it for y’all?”
“Why are people surprised lol,” another comment reads, “I’ve worked in numerous chain restaurants in the past & can confirm that a lot of them just heat up frozen foods.”
The employee who posted the video has since felt the repercussions.
At the very end of the video, the employee can be seen giving a thumbs up to the camera.
Since the video went viral, the young employee has lost her job. Last week she retweeted her now-viral video and wrote, “lol I lost my job for this video.”
Panera Bread eventually commented on the video.
Jessica Hesselschwerdt, a spokesperson for Panera Bread, defended the video. Ms. Hesselschwerdt told The Washington Post that their products are “made offsite with our proprietary recipe developed by our chefs.
“It is shipped frozen to our bakery-cafes — this allows us to avoid using preservatives which do not meet our cleanliness standards.”
Ms. Hesselschwerdt did not comment on the firing of the employee who shared the video.
It appeared that the fired employee seemed less than surprised by the outcome.
Her tweet, “lol I lost my job for this video” didn’t exactly come across as devastated.
She also seemed quite unfazed by the firing in general.
The ex-employee, responded to one commenter saying, “Ehh I mean it is what it is”, and to someone asking her what she expected to happen she replied, “exactly what happened lol”.
It’s excellent to see that she’s not taking the firing to heart!
However, she then did write a respectful message for Panera.
Despite people asking her in the comments if Panera paid her to write the message, she denied this and continued to say that she respected the company and explained that there was now simply no way for her to make the video go away.
The debate on twitter quickly turned into whether or not it was right to serve food in this manner.
A lot of people were quick to point out that if restaurants were to hand-make everything then the price and time it took to get to you would increase exponentially.
It appeared that the answer the internet had was simply, if you want something freshly prepared, make it yourself.
It’s hard to imagine if this will really impact Panera Bread in any serious way.
While this may seem like a severe problem for Panera right now, as with most things, this will likely be forgotten about by next week at the latest.
Perhaps this may stop a fair few people from going to Panera Bread, but it’s unlikely that this will pose too much of a serious problem for the company.
Will this change your opinion of Panera Bread?
Personally, I’ve never been to a Panera Bread so I can’t accurately say whether it will impact my going or not.
At the same time, this is a bit of a complicated situation.
Sure, it is it is completely understandable to see people’s point about, “How did you think fast food was made?!”
Still, secretly knowing how something is made, and seeing it yourself are two very different things. What will change for some people is that this video will have pulled back the curtain, and irreversibly presented them with a truth that they may have been quite happy ignoring.
h/t: The Washington Post
