Panera Bread

U.S. Job Applicant Privacy Policy

 

Last Updated: May 20, 2026

 

Thank you for your interest in a career with Panera Bread Company (“Panera,” “we,” or “us”). This U.S. Job Applicant Privacy Policy (this “Privacy Policy”) describes how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal information as part of our recruitment process.  This Privacy Policy applies to personal information that we collect when you visit careers.panerabread.com to submit a job application (collectively, the “Careers Website”).

 

In this Privacy Policy, “personal information” refers to information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to you.

 

This Privacy Policy does not apply to other information collected online through our consumer-facing websites, mobile applications, social media pages, direct marketing campaigns, or other online communications (collectively, the “Consumer Services”). For information regarding our privacy practices related to the Consumer Services, please review our consumer privacy policy, which is available here.

 

This Privacy Policy also does not address the way we collect and handle your personal information if you become a Panera employee. For more information on our privacy practices related to our employees, please contact your HR representative.

 

 

NOTICE AT COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

 

1.     Information We Collect about You

 

When you apply for a job with Panera or access the Careers Website, we collect the following categories of personal information from and about you:

 

·      Identifiers/contact information, including name, contact information, postal addresses, email addresses, birth dates, telephone number, IP addresses, and other similar identifiers.

 

·      Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute, including names, postal addresses, telephone numbers, and education and employment information.

 

·      Protected classification characteristics under California law or federal law, including age (over 40), race, sex/gender, gender identity/gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, military or veteran status, and disability status, age, race, ethnicity, national origin, and citizenship.

 

·      Internet or other electronic network activity information, including information about activity on this Careers Website.

 

·      Professional or employment-related information, including job roles/titles, previous employers, information included in job applications, resumes/CVs, professional license(s), certification(s), and/or other qualifications.

 

·      Education information, such as your education records, highest level of education; the school(s) you attended and your dates of attendance; the degree(s), certificate(s), or other educational qualifications you earned; and your transcript(s) or training records.

 

·      Inferences, meaning inferences drawn from any of the above-listed categories of information to create a summary about, for example, individuals’ abilities or aptitude.

 

·      Sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and other government issued identifiers, information revealing or concerning racial or ethnic origin and personal information collected and analyzed concerning sexual orientation.

 

We may additionally conduct a background check for employment purposes.  The background check may review your criminal conviction history, credit history, and/or drug test information that may be relevant to the position that you apply for with us.  Prior to conducting this check, we will provide you with a separate written notice and an opportunity to consent to the background check.

 

2.     Business and Commercial Purposes for Collecting and Processing Personal Information

 

We use the personal information that we collect from and about you for our recruitment activities and as otherwise necessary or appropriate in connection with the fulfillment of other legitimate business purposes. The specific purposes for which we use your personal information are described below.

 

·      Facilitate the recruiting and interview process. We use your personal information in connection with our general recruitment activities, which may include identifying you as a potential candidate, reviewing your application for a position with us, verifying the information provided to us in connection with your application or received from other sources, determining your eligibility and suitability for a potential position or other opportunities with us, and communicating with you about the status of your application or other opportunities with us that may be of interest to you.

 

·      Perform analytics. We use your personal information to perform analytics and evaluate and improve our job application and recruitment activities.

 

·      Maintain security and fraud prevention. We use your personal information to help maintain the security and integrity of our business, network, and systems and to detect, prevent, investigate, and protect you, our business, and others from fraud and other unsafe activity.

 

·      Satisfy our legal obligations. We use your personal information to comply with applicable law and/or respond to requests and communications from law enforcement authorities or other government officials.

 

·      As otherwise necessary or appropriate. We use your personal information for other purposes at your direction or with your consent. Additionally, we use your personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate to protect our rights, privacy, safety, property, and/or those of others.

 

We may also use and disclose deidentified data (i.e., data that cannot reasonably be used to infer information about, or otherwise be linked to you) or aggregated data (i.e., data from which your identity has been removed and that is not linked or reasonably linkable to you) as necessary to fulfill our legitimate business purposes.

 

Sensitive Personal Information: We may collect, process and use “sensitive personal information” for permissible “business purposes” (as such terms are defined in California law), including assessing work eligibility and as otherwise provided in this Privacy Policy.  We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you.

 

3.     Sales and Sharing of Personal Information

 

On the Careers Website, we or our third-party partners may use analytics technologies that collect your personal information, including to analyze use of the portal, but we do not knowingly sell or share personal information for advertising purposes.

 

4.     Information Retention

 

We retain each category of personal information that we collect for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to satisfy legal or reporting requirements.

 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the information; the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of the information; the purposes for which we use the information; whether we can achieve those purposes through other means; and the applicable legal requirements.

 

Once retention of your personal information is no longer necessary for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, we will either delete or deidentify it or, if this is not possible (for example, because the information has been stored in backup archives), we will securely store the personal information and isolate it from further processing until deletion or deidentification is possible. Furthermore, if you accept a job offer from us, we may transfer the personal information that we collected from and about you during the recruiting and interview process to your personnel file, which may be subject to a different retention policy.

 

 

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

 

We collect personal information directly from you when you apply for employment with Panera and throughout the recruitment process.  In addition, we and our service providers may collect certain personal information from other sources. For example, during the job application and recruitment process, we may collect information about you from employment agencies and recruiters, your current and former employer(s) and educational institution(s), your professional references, and publicly-available sources (e.g., government records and social media sites/platforms). We use the information that we receive from other sources to verify or supplement the information we collect, to assess your fitness for a position, and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.

 

When you visit our Careers Website, we or our third-party analytics partners and service providers may collect your browsing history, site usage data, and other information regarding your online activity automatically through a variety of technologies, such as cookies, tags, SDKs, or scripts.

 

We may combine the personal information we receive from and about you.  We will treat and protect combined personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

 

 

INFORMATION DISCLOSURE

 

In connection with one or more of the purposes outlined above, we may disclose your personal information to the categories of recipients listed below.

 

·      Our affiliates. We will disclose your personal information to our affiliates for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy and/or other business and operational purposes.

 

·      Our service providers. We will disclose your personal information to third parties that provide business, professional, or technical support functions for us and help us operate our business. These service providers, which may include job recruiters, are subject to contractual obligations and restrictions on the use of the information we disclose to them for any purpose other than carrying out the services that they are performing for us.

 

·      Analytics partners. When you access the Careers Website, we, along with our third-party partners and/or data analytics providers may use your personal information related to your browsing and website use to perform analytics.

 

·      Our personnel. We will disclose your personal information to Panera personnel who need it to perform their tasks and duties and as otherwise necessary or appropriate.

 

·      Government and public authorities. In response to valid warrants or subpoenas, we will disclose your personal information to government authorities, law enforcement, courts, and others, in each case to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations or requests.

 

·      Third parties in connection with a sale or business transaction. We may sell or purchase business assets during the normal course of business. If another entity acquires us or any of our assets, information that we have collected may be transferred to such entity and its advisors leading up to and/or following the transaction. In addition, if any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding is brought by or against us, information that we hold may be considered an asset of ours and may be sold or transferred to third parties.

 

·      Other third parties. We will disclose your personal information to other parties at your direction or with your consent. We will also disclose your personal information as we believe necessary or appropriate either: (a) under applicable law; (b) to protect our operations and those of any of our affiliates and franchisees; (c) to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or those of others; or (d) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit damages that we may sustain.

 

We may disclose your personal information for other reasons that we will describe at the time of information collection or prior to disclosing your information.

 

All the above-listed categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

 

 

INFORMATION SECURITY

 

We employ and maintain reasonable administrative, physical, and technical measures designed to safeguard and protect the personal information under our control from unauthorized access, use, and disclosure.

 

If we deidentify information, we will maintain and use the information in deidentified form and not attempt to reidentify the information except as required or permitted by law.

 

 

CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

 

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides California residents with certain rights in relation to their personal information. Pursuant to the CCPA, this section provides additional details regarding our collection, use, and disclosure of personal information relating to job applicants residing in California. This section also describes the rights available to you as a California-based job applicant in relation to your personal information and how you can exercise your rights.

 

1.     Your Rights

 

If you reside in California, you are entitled to the following privacy rights, subject to applicable exceptions:

 

Right to know. You have the right to know what personal information we have collected about you, including:

 

·      the categories of personal information we have collected about you and the categories of sources from which we collected such information;    

 

·      the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you;

 

·      the business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing personal information about you;

 

·      the categories of third parties to whom we disclosed such personal information; and

 

·      if we sold, shared, or disclosed your personal information for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing: sales and shares, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient received; and disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal information categories that each category of recipient obtained.

 

Right to correct. You have the right to correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing, subject to appropriate verification.

 

Right to delete. You have the right to request we delete the personal information that we have collected from you. Sometimes, we may not be able to fully address your request such as to perform a contract, to detect and protect against fraudulent activity, to comply with legal obligations, and to manage the hiring process.

 

Right to opt-out of sale or sharing of personal information. On the Careers Website, we or our third-party partners may use analytics technologies that collect your personal information, including to analyze use of the portal, but we do not knowingly sell or share personal information for advertising purposes.

 

2.     Submit a Privacy Request

 

If you are a California resident and interested in exercising a right to know, correct, or delete, please complete and submit the form available here, send an email to privacy@panerabread.com, or contact us by phone at 855-372-6372.  In order to protect your privacy, we may require you to provide up to three (3) pieces of personal information with your request that we can match with information we maintain in order to verify that it is you making the request. Where applicable, we will use the requested information for verification purposes only. Please note that we may decline a request where we are unable to verify your identity and confirm that the personal information we maintain relates to you. We will never ask to verify your identity to opt out of sale of your personal information.

 

We will not discriminate against you if you decide to exercise your rights under the CCPA. Please note that certain rights are subject to applicable exceptions under the CCPA.

 

3.     Authorized Agents

 

You may authorize someone to submit a privacy rights request on your behalf (an “authorized agent”). An authorized agent will need to demonstrate that you’ve authorized them to act on your behalf, unless you have provided the agent with power of attorney pursuant to applicable probate law. Depending on the evidence provided, we may also contact you to verify your identity with us or request confirmation that the agent is authorized to submit the request on your behalf.

 

 

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

 

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last Updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy indicates when it was last revised. Any changes will become effective when we post a revised version of this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to remain informed about our information handling and privacy practices.

 

 

 CONTACT US

 

If you have any questions or concerns about this Careers Website or our information handling and privacy practices related to the Careers Website, please send an email to workday-help@panerabread.com or write to us at the following address:

 

Panera, LLC 
1400 S. Highway DriveFenton, Missouri, 63026 
Attn: Human Resources