I may or may not have mentioned on here that I have an amazing job and that I get to work from home.  However, occassionaly I like to venture out of the house to get my work done.  For the past few months I've been alternating between going to Panera and Starbucks to do my work.  I started comparing the two places in terms of being good places to get my work done at, and I came to a decision of which one I like the best.  However, before I reveal my decision, I would like to discuss my reasons why I picked the place that I did.

Let me start by saying that both Panera and Starbucks are great places in themselves.  They have a lot to offer.  However, in terms of practicality when trying to work, one stands out above the other.  They both have that coffee shop feel, however Panera is more of a restaurant.  They offer both food and coffee, where as Starbucks offers multiple kinds of coffee and some little desserts.  The food aspect doesn't really bother me though, but I only like to drink coffee when I work. 

Panera is typically more busy than Starbucks is during the day.  It can be very hard to find a place to work in Panera, considering they only have 2 outlets in the whole place to plug in your laptop at and their store policy restricts you to only sitting in a places that fits the number of people in your party.  This presents complications for me because my work stuff takes up a lot of room, and when I sit at one of their dinky little 2 person tables, my stuff ends up on the floor.  Starbucks on the other hand, has an outlet about every 2 feet, and has plenty of places for single person parties to sit.  It can get busy, but it doesn't really affect the sitting arrangements because most people just come in and get coffee and leave. 

I enjoy the environment at Starbucks much more than I do Panera's environment.  Panera plays classical music, which makes me so tired and non highly functional.  However, Starbucks plays slow and soft jazz, r&b, folk, country, and acoustic music.  I love it a lot.  Also, the crowd that Starbucks attracts is so diverse and interesting.  You can see every kind of person from a guy covered in pirate tattoos to a guy walking in wearing renaissance armor   I love this aspect of Starbucks a lot. 

As a result, I have decided that Starbucks wins this competition in my mind.  Starbucks meets my needs much better than Panera does.  I wish I would have just been coming here the whole time.  In fact, I'm at Starbucks right now getting some work done.  Michael Buble's new cd Crazy Love is playing in the background and I'm enjoying a chai tea   Its wonderful, but I have to leave soon to do some grocery shopping.  We are in desperate need for this.  It's most commonly what we eat for breakfast.  Well, I hope this review was helpful for someone other than me lol.  Yay for Starbucks.  Peace.