Panera Bread has employed a outstanding disaster supervisor whereas the bakery-café chain navigates ongoing lawsuits over its extremely caffeinated Charged Lemonade and plans a long-awaited preliminary public providing.
Brooke Buchanan is Panera’s new chief company affairs officer, an organization spokesperson confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday. Buchanan involves Panera from Edelman, a worldwide communications agency the place she most lately served because the U.S. lead for disaster, serving to corporations put together for and reply to reputational dangers. She didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Once dubbed a “company Ghostbuster” by Vanity Fair, Buchanan served because the chief spokeswoman for embattled blood-testing firm Theranos throughout its fraud scandal following a 2015 Wall Street Journal exposé of the startup’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes. In the position, which she left after lower than a yr, Buchanan dealt with firm messaging throughout Theranos’ fall from grace because it was investigated by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Buchanan’s new position at Panera comes a month after the restaurant chain settled with the plaintiffs within the first of 4 lawsuits it faces over its Charged Lemonade. The confidential settlement was with the household of Sarah Katz, an Ivy League scholar with a coronary heart situation who died after ingesting Charged Lemonade in September 2022.
Panera, which has denied wrongdoing, introduced in May that it was discontinuing the lemonade nationwide as a part of a “current menu transformation.”
The lawsuits, which had been all filed by Philadelphia legislation agency Kline & Specter, PC, referred to as the beverage a “harmful power drink.” In addition to Katz’s dying, the fits blamed the drink for the dying of a Florida man and for inflicting everlasting cardiac accidents in two beforehand wholesome individuals. Those fits are ongoing, with the case of the Florida dying slated to go to trial in November 2025, stated Elizabeth Crawford, a companion at Kline & Specter. Of the plaintiffs who allege cardiac accidents, one has a trial set for April 2026 whereas the opposite continues to be awaiting a trial date, Crawford stated.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, wholesome adults can safely devour about 400 milligrams of caffeine each day. The lawsuits allege that Charged Lemonade had been marketed as a “plant-based and clear” beverage that contained as a lot caffeine because the restaurant’s darkish roast espresso. But at 390 milligrams of caffeine when served with out ice, a big Charged Lemonade had extra caffeine than any measurement of Panera’s darkish roast espresso, the courtroom paperwork stated. The Charged Lemonade additionally had guarana extract, one other stimulant, in addition to the equal of almost 30 teaspoons of sugar within the giant measurement, the courtroom paperwork added.
Following the lawsuit over Katz’s dying, Panera made a number of modifications, together with shifting the Charged Lemonade behind the counter so it was now not self-serve and updating its vitamin info to mirror how a lot caffeine was within the drink when it was served with ice. It additionally displayed signage in shops cautioning that Charged Lemonade must be consumed moderately.
Panera, headquartered in Missouri, was bought in 2017 by European funding group JAB Holding Co., which took the chain from public to personal. Panera has lengthy indicated plans to go public once more and filed confidential paperwork for an preliminary public providing close to the top of 2023.
A spokesperson for JAB declined to remark Wednesday on the timing for a possible IPO and on the hiring of Buchanan.
After her time at Theranos, Buchanan grew to become international vp of communications at Whole Foods because the grocery chain recovered from allegations of overcharging prospects for packaged meals, over which it paid $500,000 as a part of a settlement to New York City’s shopper affairs division. Whole Foods denied the allegations as a part of the settlement.
Buchanan has additionally held PR roles at Walmart, JCPenney and Williams-Sonoma, and he or she labored as a senior press adviser to the late Sen. John McCain throughout his 2008 presidential marketing campaign, in accordance with her LinkedIn web page.
She is beginning at Panera at a time when informal eating eating places as a complete are struggling: TGI Fridays lately shuttered dozens of eating places and filed for Chapter 11 chapter, whereas Red Lobster filed for chapter safety earlier this yr earlier than clawing its approach out.
Last November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Panera laid off about 17% of its company staffers forward of the deliberate IPO. The firm reportedly had extra company layoffs in October of this yr.