LAist: Wake Up LA: Panera

javajunkee

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:58:06 -0800

I agree with many of your observations...though I suspect I'm a much more dedicated fan of Panera. I moved out to Los Angeles in August 2006 and was shocked by the disturbing lack of good coffee shops with wifi access, particularly in the Valley. I live in Chatsworth, which is as close to Ventura County as an Angeleno can get. Thus it's simply impractical to venture that far to try to find coffee. I fancy myself a bit of a writer even when my writing is very sparse, so I especially like endless coffee and internet connectivity to provide me with something to do when I'm not writing. I always enjoyed Panera back in the midwest, where it has its roots (fact check here?), but we seemed to have way more independent coffee shops in my college town that had not yet been infected by the Starbucks plague. I suspect that my departure had something to do with the plague taking hold in my hometown just as I headed out to the sunshine and swimming pools of Southern California. I'd worked the bar for five years at a little Starbucks wannabe store that was managed horribly, and was therefore very disappointed not to find good espresso in the SFV. You cannot find it at Panera either, but at least the coffee keeps coming and the internet is free. And the souffles are the truth when it comes to breakfast items. They also have bread bowl soup that is hands and feet above Quiznos(r) disgusting soup, and a frontega chicken sandwich that makes me realize why tomatoes are here. anyway...I was very happy when they opened a panera caddycorner from my workplace on the Northridge/Chatworth border. I've been off work recently, so I can hang out in there during the day and hog bandwidth, if I am so inclined :D Good post.

Lindsay William-Ross

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:27:50 -0800

Thanks, worriedman. If I'd seen any such insanity as you described you'd bet your bottomless cup of coffee that it would have been my lead photo. People are outrageous!

worriedman

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:10:56 -0800

Great post. They used to NOT monitor the net usage there at the Studio City location. I think I know why they started cracking down on it: One day, pre-usage-monitoring... I saw a guy, (I'm not exaggerating here) sit at a Panera table... whip out a full size 17" monitor, hook it to his laptop (I guess the laptop screen wouldn't suffice) and start working.... I couldn't believe it. I left for about an hour or so, then came back to see if he was still there (I was at the Kinkos working on a project). He was indeed still there. But there was an addition to his Panera workstation. A fucking printer. I laughed SO hard! And he was at one of the "good" tables too. A 5-top at least, had he been with humans... instead of demo-ing an Office Max floor display. All that, on the back of a size-small cup of coffee.