This Sweet Coffee Easily Ranked Last In Our Panera Bread Drink Taste Test

As you may already know, Panera Bread sells a heck of a lot more than bread. There's a wide range of pastries, soups, salads — and there are some decent beverage options, too. We tried 13 different Panera Bread drinks and ranked them from worst to best. We were pretty impressed by some of the smoothies, lemonades, and cold brews on offer, but there was one sickly sweet drink that sank right to the bottom of the list: the caramel latte.

With freshly brewed espresso, ribbons of caramel syrup, foamed milk, and whipped cream, the coffee sounds promising when you first look at the menu. However, our tester found it all to be way too much. The drink was overly decadent, and there was nothing to cut the sweetness. Some salt may have done the trick, or even more coffee. The espresso was completely masked by all of the milk and cream, and although the caffeine content was still there, the coffee flavor wasn't.

We're not the only ones with mixed feelings on Panera's flavored iced coffees, if online reviews are anything to go by. One person on Facebook said, "They need to take it off their menu." Another added, "At least at my Panera, sometimes the iced caramel latte just tastes like milk and maybe a touch of coffee and that's about it"

On Reddit, a former Panera employee created a thread about how inconsistent the caramel latte is from place to place. The latte is meant to have three pumps of syrup and two shots of espresso, but the person says, "Sometimes it's very sweet, sometimes bitter, and the one I'm sipping now I'm convinced doesn't have any espresso in it, and just regular coffee."

Our tester found all of Panera's flavored iced lattes to be too indulgent, but they did note that if you have a sweet tooth or don't particularly like the taste of coffee, you might enjoy them. Some people really like the caramel latte, and Panera's new holiday menu has some different options you could try. However, we think the cold brews are overall just a safer option to pair with any of the Panera Bread sandwiches.