I Tried Every Potbelly Soup And This Was The Best

Potbelly may be best known for its sandwiches, even those you instantly regret ordering – but that doesn't mean the chain's menu doesn't have more to offer. You'll also find cookies, milkshakes, and other sweet treats on the menu, along with classic sandwich shop staples like salads, bags of chips, and whole pickles. Hot food lovers are also in luck when they step foot into a Potbelly location, because it also offers a selection of soups to keep you warm. But are they any good? I set out to answer this question by trying each of Potbelly's soup offerings: broccoli cheddar, garden vegetable, chicken pot pie, and loaded baked potato. 

It's worth noting that similarly-categorized foods on Potbelly's menu, like the chili and mac and cheese, were intentionally not included in this ranking. When trying each of the four soups, I leaned on my prior soup-ranking experience and paid close attention to which were true to the flavor they were meant to represent, and overall, which soup simply tasted the best. Determining the best one came down to the taste of the soup's broth, whether there were plenty of inclusions or how chunky the soup was, and whether a soup offered up a particularly exceptional flavor or, on the other hand, was a bit bland. 

After tasting each of Potbelly's soups and closely comparing the flavor profiles of each, there was one obvious weak link: the garden vegetable. Now, don't get me wrong, this soup wasn't necessarily bad, it just couldn't compare to the other soups on this list. I should also acknowledge that I tend to enjoy creamy soups more so than brothy ones, though I certainly can give brothy soups credit where its due. Alas, I simply don't think that Potbelly's garden vegetable soup is worthy of that much credit.

To start with the positives, I at least appreciated how many veggies were loaded into a small cup of this soup. More specifically, veggie inclusions consisted of beans, carrots, celery, corn, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and potatoes, so you'd think that there'd be some impressive flavors going on here. Instead, this soup was just overwhelmingly bland, and the veggies all sort of mushed together instead of working in harmony. The broth itself was perhaps the blandest element of them all, offering up virtually no tomato flavor and instead tasting overwhelmingly watery. 

None of the veggies particularly stood out or carried the soup in any way, making for an overall forgettable cupful. If you're a big fan of vegetable soup, then maybe you'd like this one over Potbelly's other flavors, but for me, it's not one I'd return to in the future.

I'm a big fan of loaded baked potato soups — when they're done well, that is. When I conducted a ranking of nine Panera store-bought soups, I enjoyed its rendition of baked potato soup so much that I put it in third place. To be fair, Potbelly's loaded baked potato soup is technically earning third place in its respective ranking as well. But when it's out of four total soups, that's not exactly a good thing.

I didn't hate the loaded baked potato flavor or find that it had any overtly awful flavors. From the overall flavor of the broth to the inclusions, I just found it to be very underwhelming. The broth was indeed creamy and rich, but I wanted something in it to taste more specifically like a loaded baked potato instead of just generally creamy (the Panera baked potato soup, for example, had a very sour cream-forward flavor). The inclusions were also disappointing. 

While there were plenty of potato chunks in Potbelly's loaded baked potato soup, that's about all it had. No bacon bits or bacon flavor, no sour cream, and no real cheese flavor (the ingredients do claim that there's cheddar cheese in the mix, but I wasn't tasting any). So, while I didn't think that this soup tasted bad, it didn't taste like a loaded baked potato soup — something like "cream of potato" would've been much more accurate of a name. 

Broccoli cheddar is another example of a soup that, when done right, can be exceptionally delicious. I was a fan of Panera's broccoli cheddar soup, I sang high praises to the broccoli cheddar soup in my Trader Joe's soup ranking, and now I'm singing high praises to Potbelly's broccoli cheddar soup, too. Incredibly simple in design yet impeccably savory and warming, this broccoli cheddar soup managed to hit all the right savory notes, and I found myself going back for bite after bite without even thinking about it.

Perhaps the most successful aspect of this soup came down to that cheesy broth. A lesser broccoli cheddar soup would have had a creamy broth with perhaps a hint of cheesiness — but this soup went full-throttle. Each bite was almost more savory than the last, but just when I thought that the cheesy flavor might become too overwhelming, the broccoli stepped in to contrast it with just the right hit of veggie-forward goodness and slight bitterness. The broccoli also had just the right texture — tender but not mushy, and a much welcome textural addition to an otherwise creamy and watery soup. 

If I have one small complaint about this Potbelly's broccoli cheddar soup, it's that I wish there was just a touch more of the broccoli and carrot inclusions. Otherwise, however, this flavor is a solid addition to Potbelly's soup lineup, and one that any broccoli cheddar lover would likely enjoy. 

It only makes sense that chicken pot pie be transformed into a soup. After all, classic chicken pot pie filling already is pretty soup-like by nature, so capturing all of that rich, savory goodness in actual soup format isn't so far off base. Potbelly took the cue with its chicken pot pie soup, and considering that it's already been  deemed an ultimate fall comfort food, it's safe to say that it's a winning one. 

Right off the bat, the soup looked unsuspecting. If anything, I was worried that my cup was missing the pot pie topping (it had just sunk into the soup, I would soon discover). So, needless to say, taking that first bite was a bit of a surprise, both in terms of getting a big spoonful of the pot pie topping, but also realizing how sheerly delicious the soup was. When I say that this soup tasted exactly like a chicken pot pie (and a really delicious one, at that), I'm not exaggerating. 

Potbelly really nailed its chicken pot pie soup — both in terms of crafting a tasty soup but also one that truly lives up to its namesake. The soup itself was perfectly rich and positively savory, while that pot pie topping added the perfect salty, buttery, bread-y contrast. I have absolutely no complaints or notes about it, and the next time I order soup at Potbelly, the chicken pot pie flavor would absolutely be the one I'd choose. 

Ranking these four Potbelly soups was less a task in determining which ones were bad — I didn't think any of them were — but rather in determining which ones were stronger than others. So, more successful soups were those that actually lived up to the flavors they were meant to represent, like the chicken pot pie or broccoli cheddar flavors. An exception would be the garden vegetable soup, which did indeed come loaded with plenty of veggies, but it was ultimately too bland and underwhelming to consider ranking any higher. The soup's broths were also a key factor in this ranking. The garden vegetable soup had a rather disappointing and watery one, whereas the chicken pot pie had a rich and savory one. 

In terms of how I actually conducted the ranking, I purchased all of the soups from Potbelly at the same time. I made sure to try them while they were still warm, and I did try them all within the same 30-minute period, giving myself a chance to fully consider each soup's individual flavor before moving on to the next. After initially trying each of the soups, I made sure to try each one another time before determining my ultimate ranking.