Jul 14, 2026
Panera broke new ground in 2022 when it unveiled its Unlimited Sip Club.
For $11 per month, fans of the sandwich chain could grab as many drinks from its self-serve beverages (including coffee, tea, agave lemonade and soda) as they wanted, pretty much whenever they wanted.
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Four years later, the company is making a big alteration to the club rules, doing away with the “unlimited” stipulation. And new drinks added to Panera’s menu or drink station will not be included in what club members can pour.
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Starting on August 19, members will be limited to 30 self-service drinks per month. The price of membership, which has increased over the years, will remain at $15 per month or $120 per year. And the club’s name will change to just, Sip Club.
Doing the math
While members might be upset to see their benefits cut, Panera argues the club is still a good value for fans of its drinks.
Members who get just four drinks per month basically spend the same as the membership fee. And should they take advantage of the 30 possible drinks, they would save about $100 per month, the company says. (Members can still order a beverage every two hours and they are eligible for free delivery on eligible orders.)
The decision to tighten benefits comes, in part, to cut back on account sharing and other member abuses, but it also occurs as Panera looks to reinvent itself to become more relevant to today’s consumers.
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A massive overhaul
Panera is in the midst of spending millions of dollars to overhaul its menu and catch the eyes of customers who have stopped coming to the restaurant. The goal is to raise sales from last year’s $6 billion to $7 billion by 2028. (The company hit its peak in 2023, when it saw sales of $6.5 billion.)
‘The guest doesn’t dislike us, they just have forgotten about us,’ CEO Paul Carbone told The Wall Street Journal late last year.
One of the non-menu changes in that overhaul has been the testing of a points-based rewards program, which started in 216 locations in January and is expected to have a larger rollout later this year. That could factor into the decision to merge the Sip Club with MyPanera.
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To woo back customers, the chain has streamlined the menu and removed several beverages. Most notable among those is the discontinuation of the chains’ hyper-caffeinated “Charged Lemonade,” which had 390 milligrams of caffeine in a 30-ounce cup. The chain settled several wrongful death and cardiac injury lawsuits, without admitting guilt.
Charged Lemonade debuted alongside the Unlimited Sip Club and was touted as a way to “reach a new guest looking for an alternative to traditional energy drinks,” according to Eduardo Luz, Panera Bread’s Chief Brand & Concept Officer.
User reactions to news of the cutbacks to the Unlimited Sip Club are about what you might expect.
“I’ll file a chargeback and will never go there again,” wrote one user on Reddit.
“If they do this then they should not be surprised if customers bring their own 64 ounce reusable cups or maybe a 128 ounce Yeti container or maybe multiple reusable 64 ounce cups and get 2 free ice waters along with one soda,” wrote another.
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Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
