Panera Bread has hired a prominent crisis manager while the bakery-café chain navigates ongoing lawsuits over its highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade and plans a long-awaited initial public offering.
Brooke Buchanan is Panera’s new chief corporate affairs officer, a company spokesperson confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday. Buchanan comes to Panera from Edelman, a global communications firm where she most recently served as the U.S. lead for crisis, helping companies prepare for and respond to reputational risks. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Once dubbed a “corporate Ghostbuster” by Vanity Fair, Buchanan served as the chief spokeswoman for embattled blood-testing company Theranos during its fraud scandal following a 2015 Wall Street Journal exposé of the startup’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes. In the role, which she left after less than a year, Buchanan handled company messaging during Theranos’ fall from grace as it was investigated by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Buchanan’s new role at Panera comes a month after the restaurant chain settled with the plaintiffs in the first of four lawsuits it faces over its Charged Lemonade. The confidential settlement was with the family of Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a heart condition who died after drinking Charged Lemonade in September 2022.
Panera, which has denied wrongdoing, announced in May that it was discontinuing the lemonade nationwide as part of a “recent menu transformation.”
The lawsuits, which were all filed by Philadelphia law firm Kline & Specter, PC, called the beverage a “dangerous energy drink.” In addition to Katz’s death, the suits blamed the drink for the death of a Florida man and for causing permanent cardiac injuries in two previously healthy people. Those suits are ongoing, with the case of the Florida death slated to go to trial in November 2025, said Elizabeth Crawford, a partner at Kline & Specter. Of the plaintiffs who allege cardiac injuries, one has a trial set for April 2026 while the other is still awaiting a trial date, Crawford said.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, healthy adults can safely consume about 400 milligrams of caffeine daily. The lawsuits allege that Charged Lemonade had been advertised as a “plant-based and clean” beverage that contained as much caffeine as the restaurant’s dark roast coffee. But at 390 milligrams of caffeine when served without ice, a large Charged Lemonade had more caffeine than any size of Panera’s dark roast coffee, the court documents said. The Charged Lemonade also had guarana extract, another stimulant, as well as the equivalent of nearly 30 teaspoons of sugar in the large size, the court documents added.
Following the lawsuit over Katz’s death, Panera made several changes, including moving the Charged Lemonade behind the counter so it was no longer self-serve and updating its nutrition information to reflect how much caffeine was in the drink when it was served with ice. It also displayed signage in stores cautioning that Charged Lemonade should be consumed in moderation.
Panera, headquartered in Missouri, was purchased in 2017 by European investment group JAB Holding Co., which took the chain from public to private. Panera has long indicated plans to go public again and filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering near the end of 2023.
A spokesperson for JAB declined to comment Wednesday on the timing for a potential IPO and on the hiring of Buchanan.
After her time at Theranos, Buchanan became global vice president of communications at Whole Foods as the grocery chain recovered from allegations of overcharging customers for packaged foods, over which it paid $500,000 as part of a settlement to New York City’s consumer affairs department. Whole Foods denied the allegations as part of the settlement.
Buchanan has also held PR roles at Walmart, JCPenney and Williams-Sonoma, and she worked as a senior press adviser to the late Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, according to her LinkedIn page.
She is starting at Panera at a time when casual dining restaurants as a whole are struggling: TGI Fridays recently shuttered dozens of restaurants and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, while Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year before clawing its way out.
Last November, The Wall Street Journal reported that Panera laid off about 17% of its corporate staffers ahead of the planned IPO. The company reportedly had more corporate layoffs in October of this year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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