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Albuquerque’s Paradise Bakery & Cafe locations will change to the Panera Bread name as a third store opens next week on the West Side.
The Panera Bread name is about to start popping up all over the area.
As I reported back in January, a new Panera Bread is opening on March 22 in Cottonwood Commons on the West Side.
Another will open in Santa Fe this summer, and a Panera district manager told the Journal Wednesday that the company is also looking to add a Nob Hill location.
But that’s not it for Panera Bread.
In conjunction with the new West Side store, the two Paradise Bakery & Cafés in Albuquerque will change their name to Panera Bread.
Panera Bread — a large chain headquartered in St. Louis — is Paradise Bakery’s parent company.
Panera district manager Gary Hawthorne said that everything else will stay the same at the two local Paradise shops, including the menu.
“We’re not changing anything except the name,” he said. “Same people, same product.”
But what about the beloved cookies?
“Same cookies,” he said.
The first local Paradise Café opened at Coronado Center in 2011. A second location opened off of Paseo del Norte NE in Holly Plaza.
Hawthorne said the Albuquerque locations have looked and felt more like Panera than Paradise from the start and that the Paradise name was somewhat confusing to customers.
“If you walked into a Panera Bread somewhere else in the country, you’d go, ‘Oh this is the same thing (as Albuquerque),’ whereas if you walked into a Paradise in Phoenix, it would be totally different,” he said.
The Panera Bread opening next week on the West Side will employ about 50 people, Hawthorne said. It is about 4,400-square feet and will have a drive-though.
A store near Santa Fe Place mall is slated to open in June.
Hawthorne said the company is also looking to put a bakery in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill, though nothing is officially in place yet.
-- Email the reporter at jdyer@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-823-3864
