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As Panera Bread's chief financial officer, Paul Carbone once signed off on a change that looked good on a spreadsheet.The chain swapped its salad base from 100% romaine lettuce to a mix of romaine and iceberg in the summer of 2024, a move he said was intended to save money.Now, as CEO, Carbone says Panera is trying to undo that kind of thinking."No one really likes iceberg lettuce," Carbone told Business Insider. "No one looks at that white salad and says, 'Now that's worth it.'"For Carbone, the lettuce decision — which was fully reversed in June 2025, shortly after he became chief executive — has become shorthand for a broader problem at Panera: Years of small cost-cutting moves, menu changes, and operational tweaks chipped away at the experience customers remembered loving.Panera is now rolling out a summer launch tied to its broader "RISE" transformation strategy, an acronym for the steps of the turnaround effort, which stands for "refresh the menu," “ignite value," "serve guests with excellence," and "expand the network." The latest evidence of that effort arrives this week in the form of new shrimp-topped bowls, upgraded salads, bacon-and-cheese breakfast frittatas, frozen coffees, and fruit-forward beverages — a menu overhaul intended to remind customers why they fell in love with Panera in the first place.
