While navigating continuing disputes over its highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade and preparing for a long-awaited initial public offering, Panera Bread has recruited a well-known crisis management.
A Panera representative confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that Brooke Buchanan has been appointed as the company’s new chief corporate affairs officer. Buchanan joined Panera from Edelman, a global communications firm, where she most recently held the position of U.S. crisis lead, assisting businesses in anticipating and addressing reputational threats. A request for comment from her was not answered.
Buchanan, who was once called a corporate Ghostbuster by Vanity Fair, was the main spokesperson for the troubled blood-testing business Theranos during its fraud controversy after Elizabeth Holmes, the startup’s founder, was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 2015. Buchanan oversaw business messaging amid Therano’s decline while it was looked into by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She departed the position less than a year later.
A month before to Buchanan’s new position at Panera, the restaurant company reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in the first of four claims pertaining to its Charged Lemonade. The family of Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a cardiac ailment who passed away in September 2022 after consuming Charged Lemonade, reached a private settlement.
As part of a recent menu overhaul, Panera, which has denied any wrongdoing, declared in May that it was removing the lemonade nationally.
The Philadelphia law firm Kline & Specter, PC filed all of the complaints, which referred to the beverage as a dangerous energy drink. The lawsuits claimed that the drink was responsible for Katz’s death as well as the deaths of a Florida man and two formerly healthy individuals who suffered irreversible heart damage. According to Elizabeth Crawford, a partner at Kline & Specter, those lawsuits are still pending, and the Florida death case is scheduled to go to trial in November 2025. According to Crawford, one of the claimants who claim cardiac injuries has a trial scheduled for April 2026, while the other is currently seeking a trial date.
The Food and Drug Administration states that 400 mg of caffeine per day is a safe amount for healthy persons. According to the cases, Charged Lemonade was marketed as a clean, plant-based beverage with an amount of caffeine equal to that of the restaurant’s dark roast coffee. However, according to the court records, a large Charged Lemonade has more caffeine (390 mg) than any size of Panera’s dark roast coffee when served without ice. The court documents also stated that the big size of the Charged Lemonade had the equivalent of about 30 teaspoons of sugar and guarana extract, another stimulant.
Panera made a number of adjustments after the lawsuit over Katz’s death, such as relocating the Charged Lemonade behind the counter to remove the self-serve option and revising the nutrition facts to include the amount of caffeine in the drink when served with ice. Additionally, retailers included signs warning that Charged Lemonade should only be used sparingly.
In 2017, the Missouri-based Panera restaurant went private after being acquired by the European investment group JAB Holding Co. Panera submitted private documents for an IPO near the end of 2023, indicating long-standing intentions to go public once more.
On Wednesday, a JAB representative declined to comment on the appointment of Buchanan or the timing of a possible initial public offering.
Following her tenure at Theranos, Buchanan was promoted to global vice president of communications at Whole Foods, where she helped the grocery chain recover from claims that it was overcharging customers for packaged foods. As part of the settlement, the company paid $500,000 to the consumer affairs department of New York City. As part of the settlement, Whole Foods refuted the accusations.
According to her LinkedIn page, Buchanan has also served as a senior press consultant to the late Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. She has also held public relations positions at Walmart, JCPenney, and Williams-Sonoma.
At a time when casual eating establishments are having trouble overall, she is starting at Panera: Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year before claiming its way out, while TGI Fridays recently closed dozens of its stores and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Prior to the anticipated IPO, Panera lay off roughly 17% of its corporate workers, according to a Wall Street Journal report from last November. More corporate layoffs were reportedly made by the corporation in October of this year.
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