Welcome to the Slice of Life, the online newsletter of news and food from the Panera Bread franchise in Iowa and Moline, IL. We're celebrating the beginning of fall with some great new products, toasting your health with our new Whole Grain Breads, you'll learn about upcoming Panera Bread events and you might even find a new career.

Click here for career opportunities with Panera Bread.

Savor the flavors of fall today at Panera Bread!

The new Chicken Tomesto Sandwich

A light toasting on our Panini grill brings out the best in our new sandwich. The Chicken Tomesto features our all natural pepper-mustard chicken resting on a bed of roasted tomatoes, sun-dried tomato pesto, field greens and red onions. A sandwich bursting with flavor on our Three Cheese bread at Artisan bakery-cafes and French bread at our traditional bakery-cafes. Or be very adventurous, and request the Chicken Tomesto made on our new Whole Grain bread!

New! Whole Grain Breads at Panera Bread.

Moist and hearty, our mixture of whole spelt flour, millet, flaxseed and other wheat flours and grains is sweetened with honey and topped with rolled oats. Available in loaf, miche and baguette. Also available as a bagel.

You can request our whole grain bread on any of our sandwiches (except Panini) and you can substitute a hunk of whole grain baguette for the roll or baguette served with our salads and soups. It goes especially well with our new soup featured, next!

Featured soup: the New! Cuban Black Bean soup.

Plump black beans and earthy petite lentils simmered with pork carnitas and ground chiles in a garlic-scented tomato broth spiked with chipotle, scallions, dry sherry and fresh squeezed lime juice. A meal on it's own or ask for it in your next You Pick Two®. Served every day!

Upcoming events at your neighborhood Panera Bread

New! Panera Bread's Celebration of Family

Join us Saturday, October 1st at Jordan Creek Town Center Lake in Des Moines for our Celebration of Family. This morning of fun for all ages benefits Children and Families of Iowa. Get the details at our community events page.

You can download a registration form and a team packet at that page, or click here to register (and pay) on-line.

(Pre-registration savings end on September 16th but if you write PANERA in Address line 2 we'll let you pay pre-registration rates until September 21st).

 

Starting October 1st! The Pink Ribbon Bagel Campaign

You've been asking about it all year, and it's finally back, the Cherry Vanilla bagel, or better known as the Pink Ribbon Bagel. Starting October 1st and running through November 8th, the Pink Ribbon bagel will be available at all Panera Bread locations. You'll notice only one change, our bakers are shaping it into a pink ribbon shape! Not only does it look good and taste great, but you'll feel good knowing that we'll donate 25% of the sale of each Pink Ribbon Bagel to a local breast cancer group.

Don't forget to stop by our table at the Especially for You Women's Race Against Breast Cancer in Cedar Rapids on October 2nd. We'll be sampling the Pink Ribbon Bagel.

We'll also be passing out the bagel to participants at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Des Moines on October 8th.

Calling all readers! Join the BookCrossing craze!

If you've spent any time in our "Cozy Corner" (that comfy area with the leather chairs) then you've seen our BookCrossing display. Over the past year, we've set out thousands of free books for our customers to try the internet book swapping club BookCrossing (check it out!).

In a nutshell a book is "released" into the wild, or in our case left for our customers in our "BookCrossing Zone." You pick up the book and take it home. The book is now "captured." Once captured, follow the directions on the book to the BookCrossing website and you can find out just how far your book has traveled, and comments from other readers. When you're finished with the book, you release it somewhere else!

Now that we've introduced you to the concept, we'd like you to participate. Bring in your gently used books that you'd like to release. We'll put the BookCrossing labels on and you can set them out in the basket. It can be just about any book (no textbooks), and we also encourage children and teens to particpate. Even a fun cookbook is fair game. Who knows, the next time you log onto BookCrossing, you may find out your book has traveled all the way to Great Britian (it has happened to one of our books this year!).

Don't forget, we have free Wi-Fi in all of our bakery-cafes, so you can check your BookCrossing status over a Cafe Mocha and a Pink Ribbon Bagel!

We invite you to stop by your neighborhood Panera Bread to try out new fall offerings, or check out local events. Browse Our Locations to find the Panera Bread bakery-cafe nearest you.