Panera Bread is exempt from following one of California’s newest laws, according to multiple reports. The new law will raise fast-food workers’ minimum wage to $20 per hour and will take effect beginning April 1.
The new law doesn’t recognize places that operate “a bakery that produces for sale on the establishment’s premises bread” as fast food, according to the law’s text.
Why the line was drawn at bread remains unclear.
However, Newsom pushed for the exemption, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. One of the primary beneficiaries of the exemption is Greg Flynn, a billionaire and longtime Newsom donor who has two dozen Panera Bread locations in California.
This is such a weird exemption. It’s so narrow that these places will have to raise their wages by default anyway.
Nothing will stop their employees from just leaving to take a job at McDonald’s for $20/hr instead of the $15 or whatever panera wants to pay.
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“Bread” is a legally defined term.
Bread, white bread, and rolls, white rolls, or buns, and white buns are the foods produced by baking mixed yeast-leavened dough prepared from [flour] and [water, milk, or egg] and [yeast]. The food may contain additional ingredients as provided for by paragraph © of this section. Each of the finished foods contains not less than 62 percent total solids as determined by the method prescribed in paragraph (d) of this section.
I’d need to see paragraphs C and D of that section, but based on that description alone, cinnamon buns could certainly be counted as bread as long as paragraph C doesn’t forbid a couple common ingredients like sugar, butter, and of course cinnamon.
I guess you’d also need to know how they’re defining “produces,” do they have to make the bread from scratch on-location, or if they got shipments of premade dough from somewhere to bake in-store would that count as producing bread.
I’m almost certain that the answers to those questions can be found with about 5 minutes of googling, I just honestly don’t care enough to Google it myself.
Besides flour, yeast, water, milk, and egg, the rest of the ingredients are food additives. The CFR section in my comment above says that bread is produced by baking it.
Subway selling bread is against their policy. The two halves aren’t allowed to touch.
Seriously tho, didn’t one country determine that Subway sandwiches are served on pastry, not bread? I believe the legal definition (in that country) had to do with sugar content and Subway’s was too high.
Yes that was Ireland
McDonalds gonna start selling bread
McDonald’s gonna lobby Newsom for that Big Mac exemption
You mean a big mac?
Calling it now. He’s the party’s preordained nominee for 2028.
First the vetoes, now he’s laying it on thick by being anti-labor. He’s pandering to party leadership.
If Trump wins there won’t be a election in 2028 and fuck Newman I won’t vote for him.
I see the “any criticism of Biden means you must want Trump” thing now extends to any criticism of any Democrat.
Sounds like Subway is also exempt…
Didn’t Panera follow the tim Hortons downfall model of replacing their on premise bakeries with centralized factories?
All I know is their food used to be good, and now it’s atrocious.
