Here’s a major sandwich chain closing some restaurants, bakery locations

Big time changes are in store for Panera Bread .

The beloved sandwich brand has always been built around freshly baked bread, but how it gets that bread to stores is changing.

Now owned by private company JAB Holding, Panera has been in a multi-year process of closing its Fresh Dough Facilities, and it will start shuttering the remaining facilities over the next 18 months to two years.

This completes a transition that began more than a year ago.

For many years across the nation, Panera has used its fresh dough bakeries to produce the dough used for bread, bagels, and pastries every day in all the chain’s bakery-cafés.

Slowly but surely, the chain has been getting rid of those locations and switching to a par-baked model where products arrive half-baked, frozen, and are finished on-s