It looks like the internet just found out that St. Louis-based eatery Panera Bread Company slices bagels like toast, starting the great bagel debacle of 2019.
The debate began on Monday, when St. Louis native Alek Krautmann tweeted a photo of a box of Panera bagels that had been “bread-sliced.” “Today I introduced my coworkers to the St. Louis secret of ordering bagels bread sliced,” he wrote. “It was a hit!”
BuzzFeed News spoke with some former Panera (or St. Louis Bread Company, as it’s known to natives) employees to better understand the practice.
Andrea Lanning told the outlet all Panera locations have bread slicers for bagels, which she said makes it “easy to dip in cream cheese or butter or just snack on in smaller bites.” She added, “Bread-sliced was the most popular way to prepare the bagels at the Bread Company!”
Another former employee, Jenna Jones, recounted that her life's low point involved the bread slicer, when a customer ordered 169 bagels, all sliced. “I think it was the worst day of my life and one girl had a mental breakdown when she was helping me,” she told BuzzFeed.
One person used the St. Louis-ness of it all to troll the city in especially ridiculous fashion:
While some have come to the defense of bread-sliced bagels, others are infuriated. Read some of the best reactions to 2019’s bagel-gate below.
