Panera Bread is shuttering a bread-making facility in Ontario, laying off 77 people in April as it shifts the work to another provider elsewhere in California.
The closure and layoffs were noted in a Feb. 13 letter to the state’s Employment Development Department.
The facility at an industrial complex at 1505 Dupont Ave. will “cease operations and close on April 14,” the letter states.
The 77 employees at the facility work in bread-making, logistics, sanitation and operations.
Panera Bread has nearly 200 cafe-bakery locations in California. The company told the Southern California News Group that it’s “shifting the California market to a newer bread-making process.”
“As part of this transition, we had to make the difficult decision to close our Ontario commissary facility,” the company wrote via email on Thursday, Feb. 20. “Any decision that impacts our teams is never made lightly, and we are deeply grateful for the contributions of all impacted team members.”
Employees are getting separation pay, help with COBRA health insurance premiums, outplacement services, and help finding new jobs within or outside of Panera, the company said.
Panera said that its bread-making pivot will now shift to “expert artisan bakery producers.” The bread will be prepared by the unnamed producer and then finished at Panera locations, the company said.
The founder of Panera Bread, Ken Rosenthal, died at his Scottsdale home Feb. 14 from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 81 years old.
The Missouri native and his wife Linda opened St. Louis Bread Co. in 1987. It grew to 18 locations before Rosenthal and his business partners sold it to Au Bon Pain in 1993. Though the national division was subsequently renamed Panera, many of the St. Louis-area cafes are still called by their original name.
The privately-held chain now has 2,230 locations in the United States.