Panera workers slam new menu item as 'huge waste' as customers question value

Panera Bread's latest menu item is drawing backlash online, as employees of the chain are claiming the new item leads to perfectly good bread and extra salad being tossed in the trash.

The fast-casual chain's new Salad Stuffers, which launched April 8, are marketed as "a bread bowl for your salad." 

But workers posting on Reddit claim the offering requires throwing away significant portions of Italian bread — and in some cases, leftover salad — according to an article in Today.com.

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In Panera's announcement earlier this month about the new category, chief marketing officer Mark Shambura said guests in testing "couldn't get enough" of the new roll, and called the concept a fresh spin on the chain's signature bread bowl.

The reaction online, though, has been less enthusiastic.

"The core of the bread is thrown out, and a good chunk of the salad gets tossed in the trash, too," someone claiming to be an employee at the chain wrote on Reddit's Panera forum. 

"These are a huge waste of money and food. ... I wouldn't recommend spending your hard-earned cash on them."

Another poster shared a photo on the same Reddit community, showing a tray piled with hollowed-out bread pieces. 

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The person wrote, "My manager went to a meeting about menu changes and was told these scraps cannot be given to customers or fed to birds."

Some commenters also questioned whether the item represents a true innovation — arguing it closely resembles a standard sandwich with minor changes.

"What's a Salad Stuffer roll? They shove a salad into a hollowed-out roll? Isn't that just a sandwich then?" one Reddit user wrote.

Another chimed in, "Why not just make a sandwich??"

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Others suggested ways the leftover bread could be repurposed to reduce waste.

"We made croutons and had a snack," one commenter wrote — while another said, "I will be making French toast casserole with these scraps."

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Said yet another person, "If the CEO were a smart man, these would be the new croutons.

Someone else added, "They should bake the dough with a tinfoil thing inside so the bread is hollow and doesn't need to be wasted!!"

Others suggested a bread pudding dessert or stuffing.

One commenter simply exclaimed, "I want my bread guts!"

Outside reviewers have also raised questions about whether the product is worth the price, adding to criticism from some customers.

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In a review, Tasting Table said Panera's Salad Stuffers were "meh" as expected. The outlet praised a few heartier combinations, such as the Steakhouse Salad Stuffer, but argued against the value.

The review ultimately recommended that customers just order a half salad, take the free baguette on the side and make their own version.

Some critics have also pointed out that the item bears a resemblance to offerings from Bread Zeppelin, a Texas-based chain known for its salad-stuffed baguettes, Today.com reported.

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Bread Zeppelin also leaned into the comparison.

"Hey @PaneraBread, Zeppelin's walked, so Stuffers could ... try," the company posted on social media. 

It also promoted a limited-time deal encouraging customers to bring in a Panera receipt to receive a free salad-stuffed baguette to compare the two.

The chain has also emphasized that it repurposes leftover bread into items like croutons and bread pudding.

But not everyone was so quick to toss the Salad Stuffer. 

One Reddit commenter said the item was "delicious" and described it as "like a Panera version of a wrap."

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Fox News Digital reached out to Panera, which is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, for comment.

In its announcement about the new Salad Stuffer item, the brand said, "Panera chefs and bakers innovated the new Italian Stuffer Roll to deliver the ideal balance of fluffy, soft bread and a freshly prepared dressed salad in every bite. Guests can make any salad on the menu a Stuffer, from classics like the Green Goddess Cobb Salad with Chicken or Caesar Salad to two bold, chef-crafted options created specifically for this new innovation, available at participating cafés."

Panera Bread first opened in 1987. As of March 31, 2026, there were 2,251 bakery-cafés in 48 states, in Washington, D.C., and in Ontario, Canada, the company said in its release. 

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Valerie Bertinelli says she missed narcissistic red flags in relationships: 'Made me question my self-worth'

Making it clear she’s in no rush to get back onto the dating scene, Valerie Bertinelli explained this week that she now actively looks for narcissism "red flags" when meeting men.

In her "Getting Naked" podcast on Wednesday titled "Know Your Narcissist," Bertinelli revealed that she didn’t even realize she was dealing with narcissism in her own romantic relationships until several years ago after first recognizing it in the fraught political climate.

"I don’t want to throw anybody that’s been in my life under a bus, I just want to talk about experiences that have been challenging and made me question my self-worth," the "One Day at a Time" star told her guest Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a psychologist and author.

"When we know who we are, Valerie, when someone is coming at us like the way that narcissistic people do, we can be a lot more steadfast," the doctor advised. "The only way a narcissistic relationship works is if we abandon ourselves."

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Bertinelli agreed with her assessment, admitting that in the narcissistic relationships she’d been involved in, "I totally abandoned myself to a point where my family was like ‘Where are you? We need you? Come back to us.’"

She said while she was in the relationships, she didn’t feel that way.

"You feel truly like you’re just going to make this person happy," the 66-year-old explained. "You know you can do it. ‘I know I can make them happy. I know if I work hard enough, I can make them happy. I know that I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to hurt them, so if they’re telling me that I’m doing these things. I can make myself better.’"

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When Durvasula noted that it’s human to want "intimate relationships," Bertinelli joked: "Well, I did. I'm not so much want[ing] that right now."

Durvasula revealed that "a lot of the core of narcissism is this insecurity, this fragility."

Bertinelli interjected to say that the narcissists she’s known, though, "seem like they're not insecure. They're so like — it's magnetizing to see someone that sure of themselves," and Durvasula explained that narcissists "are good at what we call expressed self-confidence," essentially being know-it-alls.

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The doctor further explained that the traits of a narcissist encompass low empathy, arrogance, entitlement, grandiosity and pathological selfishness.

"They can only center [around] themselves," she added. "They're status seeking. So, they want whatever is going to make them look powerful to the world. They are not able to tolerate things like frustration, disappointment, stress, or anything that doesn't sort of prop up that grandiose sort of fantasy of them. They're driven very much by power, domination, control. They need to be the ones on top."

And those traits, she explained, show up as "manipulation, invalidation, dismissiveness, gaslighting, rage, silent treatment, competitiveness, making us small so they can feel big, betrayal, promising things that they never follow through on."

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Prefacing her analysis of her own past relationships with "I can only speak about my own experience and being very careful not to," Bertinelli said: "I would never ever think that that person had any of those traits, but the way that they showed up was, oh boy, all of the things you said."

She added that she wanted her podcast to help people from "falling into that trap."

"I have a little joke that it's just like, ‘OK, somebody's got to tell me every single different kind of narcissist there is out there because I need to know what to not fall into.’" she said. "Again, I even talked to my therapist. I said, 'Please tell me what red flags are exactly so I can keep an eye out for them.'"

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She noted that in a past relationship someone she didn’t name had repeatedly told her she was a narcissist and that she was hurting them.

"And I was like, ‘Well, I don't want to be hurting people. I don't want to be selfish. I don't want to do all these things. Please, God, tell me.’ And I'm like, at a certain point, I said: ‘I don't understand why you're with me. Like I can't do anything right,’" she said.

But the doctor explained to her that person was manipulating her.

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"‘You will be lovable if you do the things I'm telling you to do,’" she said a narcissist would tell her. "That's the twist."

Bertinelli also suggested the person had told her she prioritizes her son, Wolfgang Van Halen, too much, which Durvasula described as a great example of low empathy, when a romantic partner can’t understand that a relationship with your child is a different kind of love.

She added that when Bertinelli thought she was building intimacy with the person by opening up, "you were basically filling an armory with weapons that they were going to use against you."

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Bertinelli said now if she sees any sign of "love bombing," where people flatter the other person to manipulate them, she can’t tell if it’s genuine affection or not.

"Because there is a point where like getting love notes or being spoken beautifully to and telling — like there's a point of letting someone know how you feel about them, and then there's the love bombing and the like it get moving fast," she said.

The doctor replied: "Idealization is not a place for a relationship to start. And to all you romantics out there, suck it because I'm going to tell you right now, it is just not."

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Bertinelli also specified the "insidious" isolation she had experienced in a relationship.

"It starts — it's not ‘Don't see your family.’ It's when you are with your family, they'll be constantly texting and constantly and starting an argument through texts and calling. And I'm like, ‘I can't talk right now,’" which she said left her feeling like she couldn’t see her family because it upset her significant other.

After breaking up with her boyfriend of 10 months in late 2024, following her divorce from her second husband in 2022, Bertinelli explained at the Los Angeles Time Festival of Books last weekend that she was "really scared of dating right now."

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She continued, "I've had, you know, two — I'm just scared."

Bertinelli told Fox News Digital at the panel that she realized for the first time through writing her memoir, "Getting Naked," "I didn't give myself enough credit for the strength I already had inside me. And that I'm — that I don't have to listen to people be negative to me."

The star said that she was "surprised that I was able to learn that. Finally! That I don't have to listen to people be horrible to me. I don't have to tolerate intolerable behavior."

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She added to Fox News Digital that when she wrote her 2022 book "Enough Already" she thought she had learned that lesson, "but I still put up with intolerable behavior after that."

"It wasn't until I really dug down and got to the root of my shame and the dark side that I made friends with it," she said. "Then I thought, ‘Now I'm done. Now I can just say, f--- you. That's it, I'm done. I'm out,’ you know?"

After divorcing her first husband, Eddie Van Halen, in 2007, she married businessman Tom Vitale in 2010. At the end of their marriage, Bertinelli began to refer to Vitale as "the narcissist," saying that he emotionally abused her, calling her "fat and lazy."

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She also called being officially divorced from Vitale the "second-best day of my life."

Bertinelli began dating writer Mike Goodnough in 2024 and said she was in love, but by year’s end, the relationship had fizzled.

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A year ago, Goodnough claimed Bertinelli was "playing a one-woman tennis match thinking there is someone on the other side of the net" after their breakup, accusing her of falsely making his social media posts about herself and "lashes out angrily" at him.

He also accused her of "hostile, dishonest, and uncalled for backhanded swipes."

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"Valerie is in a war with her ghosts. I’m just the guy who catches the bullets. And that isn’t new," he added.

After their breakup, Bertinelli said in an Instagram post she had been "irreversibly changed by him for the better" and said that she had "fumbled the last true good man I met."

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Cincinnati Reds debut City Connect uniforms and they are an abomination

MLB teams have been trying out uniforms across the league labeled as the "City Connect" collection. Some are cool, some are lame and some are... the Cincinnati Reds.

Full disclosure: I am a Reds fan. It's a painful existence, to be certain (Cincinnati hasn't won a playoff series since 1995 when I was 6 years old). But I'm not sure that I've seen anything as disgusting on the field as the uniforms the Reds wore on Saturday night against the Detroit Tigers.

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Prior to the game, the Reds welcomed the team's 2026 Reds Hall of Fame Class, including Brandon Phillips, Lou Piniella, Aaron Harang and Reggie Sanders. And then they subjected those team legends to the worst uniforms in franchise history. A history that also includes many sleeveless jerseys, by the way.

For the squeamish among us, I'd encourage you now to either shield your eyes or go read another story (preferably not that one, retention time is important for me).

Seriously, what the heck are these uniforms? The all-red is atrocious. The logo is huge and ugly. And, you might not be able to tell, but there are also faint pinstripes on the jersey, the pants and the helmet. Why? It's as if the designer's direction was "Hey, can you make the ugliest uniforms in Reds history?"

"Done and done."

And just to be clear, this is the actual plan: an all-red City Connect 2.0 set with faint pinstripes and a darker red sleeve. It's not a one-off mistake.

For the record, here's what the Reds official website says about the uniforms:

"A perennial favorite of both Reds fans and players alike, pinstripes have been featured on various Reds uniforms throughout history. City Connect 2.0 brings back this classic element to a new generation, but in a modernized tone-on-tone style. The sleeve is a darker shade of red and the jersey’s pinstripes [are] intentionally cut off at the shoulder, a nod to the popular vest-style uniforms last worn two decades ago."

Why in the world are they reminding people about the "vest-style" uniforms? Those were terrible too!

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With all the discussions about the New York Yankees looking to finally add an alternate uniform, I think it's time the Reds went the opposite direction. Cincinnati is the oldest franchise in MLB history. They should have simple, classic uniforms. I get it, I sound like a mid-30-year-old trapped in the mind of an 80-year-old. Fine.

Give me the classic Reds uniforms all day over this "modern" abomination.

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Kimmel calls Melania Trump an ‘expectant widow’ before White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump in a White House Correspondents' Dinner parody this week, calling her "an expectant widow" and joking about her marriage, just days before the dinner was disrupted by a shooting.

"Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow," Kimmel said in his parody of the event on Thursday.

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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual gathering hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association to honor journalism and fund scholarships. This year’s event, which took place on Saturday in Washington D.C., drew outsized attention because Trump attended in person for the first time while in office, though the evening was later overshadowed by violence.

Kimmel also used the parody to mock the Trumps' relationship, portraying distance between the president and the first lady.

"Oh, by the way, Melania, this is Donald. Donald, this is Melania," Kimmel said.

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The comedian pivoted to the first lady's April 26 birthday and imagined how she would mark the occasion.

"She’s planning to celebrate at home the same way she always does, looking out a window and whispering, ‘What have I done?’" Kimmel said.

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Kimmel’s segment aired just days before the annual Correspondents’ Dinner was thrown into chaos when authorities said 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance, Calif., rushed a Secret Service checkpoint at the Washington Hilton armed with multiple weapons and opened fire on an officer.

Fox News Digital reported the officer was struck in a ballistic vest and taken to a hospital, while agents returned fire and detained Allen, who was also transported for treatment. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and senior administration officials were then rushed from the venue by Secret Service agents.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and ABC for comment but did not immediately hear back.

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WWE legend touts 'very, very high' ceilings for rising stars Kendal Grey, Kali Armstrong

Kendal Grey and Kali Armstrong are two pro wrestlers who represent the future of WWE's women’s division.

Each rising superstar was able to attain WWE Evolve Women’s Championships during their time at the developmental promotion and have made a major impact since being called up to the NXT brand. Grey won the Women’s Iron Survivor Challenge and Armstrong put Lola Vice on notice that she was coming for the NXT Women’s Championship.

WWE Hall of Famer Booker T analyzed Grey and Armstrong’s meteoric rise in the company so far in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.

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"She’s proved that she’s special man. She’s a special talent just in her infancy stages already. Then again, I wouldn’t want to push Kendal too quick because right now she’s being highly touted as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, women’s wrestler to come to the WWE system," he said.

"I don’t want her to get a big head or anything like that because she is so young to the business and she’s picked it up so quickly. But then again, psychology. When she learns that, oh man, she’s gonna be hell to deal with. She’s going to be something very, very special. But she’s gotta really lean into learning that side of it."

Booker T said that Armstrong has the ability to be great as well. However, there were still certain skills that she needed to hone before her greatness could be achieved.

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"She’s a very, very special talent. The first Evolve women’s champion. And then she lost that championship to Kendal Grey. I told her, ‘There’s a reason why you lost that championship. We gotta figure that out.’ You gotta put yourself into a position where, if you do lose it, it comes right back to you," he said.

"Again, there are those building blocks that we gotta work with Kali. Me, personally, I’m going to be working with Kali person-to-person, on a one-on-one perspective, to just hone that skill, to let her know those details. I always say what you do before and what you do after … She’s got it all. She checks off so many boxes but making her complete is something I’m so looking forward to."

Grey was an amateur wrestling star in high school and was on Team USA’s national wrestling team at one point.

Armstrong was a track and field star in college before she signed with WWE.

"But as far as the ceiling, very, very high for both of those ladies," Booker T added.

Both Grey and Armstrong will be among the talent appearing on Season 3 of "WWE Legends and Future Greats" on A+E. The new season begins Sunday night at 10 p.m. ET.

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Caitlin Clark pens heartfelt message to boyfriend Connor McCaffery as they celebrate relationship milestone

Caitlin Clark is used to celebrating milestones on the court, but her most recent one came off the floor.

Clark, 24, posted a heartfelt message to Instagram to celebrate her three-year anniversary with her boyfriend, Connor McCaffery.

"Three years with my fav," Clark captioned her post alongside two white heart emojis. "You’re the best."

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In the post, Clark was wearing a blue dress and looking at McCaffery, who was in a suit. The 27-year-old McCaffery took to his own Instagram account to celebrate the milestone.

"3 years with the most beautiful best friend," McCaffery posted, with a red heart and infinity emoji.

McCaffery’s post showed the couple together in a golf cart.

Clark and McCaffery began dating in April 2023 when the couple met at the University of Iowa. Both played college basketball, as Clark rewrote the history books during her legendary career, while McCaffery played six seasons.

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McCaffery’s six seasons playing basketball all came with his dad as the team’s head coach.

As Clark has ascended into superstardom with the Indiana Fever in the WNBA, McCaffery is following in his father’s footsteps. Following his playing days at Iowa, McCaffery spent one season with the Indiana Pacers as a team assistant in an entry-level position before joining Butler as an assistant coach.

Clark is entering her third season with the Fever and is looking to get back on track after an injury-plagued second season. As a rookie, she burst onto the scene, winning Rookie of the Year and coming fourth in MVP voting.

However, last season, she played just 13 games while battling a litany of injuries.

The Fever’s first preseason game is against the New York Liberty at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday.

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Video shows alleged car thief dangle under bridge after wild chase, sparking tense standoff with police

A wild police chase through San Francisco took a jaw-dropping turn when a suspected car thief ditched his vehicle on the Bay Bridge and climbed underneath the span, at times dangling from crossbeams high above the water in a desperate attempt to avoid arrest.

The April 1 incident began after the San Francisco Police Department received a report of a stolen vehicle near 8th and Market streets. Officers quickly confirmed the car was stolen, and a police drone located it within minutes.

When officers attempted to pull the driver over, he refused to stop — triggering a pursuit through city streets and onto the freeway.

Authorities deployed spike strips, but the suspect maneuvered around them and kept going, leading police on a chase that lasted nearly 30 minutes before heading onto the Bay Bridge. California Highway Patrol units then took over as the pursuit moved onto the span.

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The suspect eventually stopped near Treasure Island, but instead of surrendering, he got out and climbed over the edge of the bridge.

"He’s on the crossbeams, under the bridge," an officer could be heard saying on body camera video, as a drone tracked the suspect below.

Video shows the man straddling narrow beams under the bridge, suspended above the water and at one point, even dangling from the structure as he moved along the span.

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Officers noted he appeared to be heading eastbound toward one of the bridge towers while clinging to the beams.

Multiple agencies rushed to the scene, including marine units, a fire boat, a CHP helicopter and additional drones, all working to keep sight of the suspect. Crews began preparing for a possible rescue operation as the suspect continued moving beneath the bridge.

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Crisis Intervention and hostage negotiation teams were also called in, working to communicate with the suspect as he briefly hid inside a hollow support beam.

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After several tense minutes, the suspect climbed back onto the roadway and was taken into custody without incident.

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SFPD Officer Robert Rueca told KTVU that the suspect ultimately gave himself up and credited drone technology with helping officers track him safely throughout the ordeal.

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"The voters of San Francisco have allowed us to use this technology to make the streets as safe as we can," Rueca told the outlet.

Police have not released the suspect’s identity.

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