• The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread has a new CEO.
• The restaurant has undergone a menu overhaul and seen lawsuits over highly caffeinated beverages.
• It's the latest in a series of leadership switches at restaurant chains over the past 12 months.

The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread is getting a new chief executive, the latest in a series of CEO transitions at major restaurant chains.

Panera Brands said Tuesday that current CEO José Alberto Dueñas, who has held the job for the last 1 ½ years, would step down immediately but remain as a "special advisor" to the new CEO until the end of March. Paul Carbone, Panera's CFO, will serve as interim CEO as the company looks for a permanent leader.

"I am immensely proud of leading Panera during this transformative period for the Company," Dueñas said. Panera Brands includes the eponymous chain as well as Caribou Coffee and bagel chain Einstein Bros.

Dueñas joined Panera in mid-2023, with the chain describing his appointment as its "next generation of CEO leadership and Board governance in preparation for its eventual IPO." While the company reportedly filed confidentially to go public in late 2023, it has yet to list.

Dueñas also oversaw the Panera chain's "largest menu transformation ever" in 2024, which included more focus on items like mac and cheese and sandwiches and bigger portion sizes.

The menu changes also eliminated Panera's Charged Sips range of beverages, which contained high levels of caffeine. The drinks were the subject of multiple lawsuits, which alleged that they left some customers with permanent injuries and problems such as body shakes.

The executive change at Panera is the latest of several CEO switches at major restaurant chains over the past year amid a tough consumer spending environment for brands from McDonald's to Nike.

Brian Niccol, formerly the CEO of Mexican grill chain Chipotle, took over the top job at Starbucks in September in an abrupt end to former CEO Laxman Narasimhan's time in the role. Starbucks has reported falling sales in key markets, including the US and China, for much of the past year.

Scott Boatwright, previously Chipotle's COO, took over as interim CEO in August.

Meanwhile, former P.F. Chang's CEO Damola Adamolekun has helmed Red Lobster since September, the same month that the seafood-focused chain emerged from bankruptcy.

Subway CEO John Chidsey retired at the end of 2024, the year after he oversaw the sandwich chain's sale to private equity firm Roark Capital in a deal worth about $9 billion.

Do you work at Panera and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in MoviePass and Vinco.
• Farnsworth has been in prison since August 2023.
• MoviePass's $10 plan led to its popularity but was unsustainable, causing bankruptcy.

Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding investors in the movie-ticket subscription service MoviePass, the US Department of Justice announced. He bought the company in 2017 while CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY).

Farnsworth, 62, also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for a second scheme related to a video-sharing platform he was involved with while under investigation for MoviePass.

Farnsworth has been in federal custody since August 2023.

"Farnsworth was anxious to accept responsibility for his conduct," Farnsworth's lawyer, Sam Rabin, told Business Insider in a statement. "The most important step in doing that was to plead guilty to the crimes with which he is charged. He did that today."

The Department of Justice charged Farnsworth and then MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe with securities fraud in 2022. The DOJ alleged that Lowe and Farnsworth "engaged in a scheme to defraud investors through materially false and misleading representations relating to HMNY and MoviePass's business and operations to artificially inflate the price of HMNY's stock and attract new investors."

The DOJ also recently charged Farnsworth and others with using "the same strategy to defraud" investors in Vinco Ventures, another publicly traded company.

Lowe, the former MoviePass CEO, pleaded guilty to securities fraud conspiracy in September 2024.

The rise and fall of MoviePass

In 2017, HMNY became the parent company of MoviePass. Farnsworth and Lowe launched a $10-a-month plan that made the service very popular. As subscriptions soared into the millions, HMNY's stock skyrocketed.

However, the $10 plan — which allowed subscribers to see a movie a day in theaters — was not sustainable, and the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. By 2020, both MoviePass and HMNY went bankrupt.

MoviePass founder Stacy Spikes, who was ousted by Lowe and Farnsworth from MoviePass in 2018, bought back the company in 2021.

MoviePass — under Spikes' leadership — is currently available nationwide.

The story of the rise and fall of MoviePass is chronicled in the documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," which was released in May and is based on BI's award-winning reporting.

• Amazon delayed its full RTO plan in some locations due to insufficient office space.
• An internal list shows the where Amazon employees will work three days a week until space is ready.
• The list shows more than 40 locations where the full five-day RTO policy is delayed.

Amazon delayed its five-day return-to-office plan in some locations due to a lack of space, as Business Insider recently reported.

An internal Amazon list viewed by Business Insider shows where employees are being asked to continue following the company's previous policy, requiring only three days a week in the office.

The locations include major tech hubs such as Santa Clara, Austin, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Bangalore.

Amazon's original guidance required employees to work from the office five days a week, beginning January 2. An Amazon spokesperson told BI on Tuesday that buildings were ready for a majority of employees on that day.

The company's real estate team late last year started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching to as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Here are more of the Amazon locations where employees are being told to continue working three days a week in the office:

Raleigh, Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, Columbia, Austin, Cupertino, Irvine, Nashville, Boulder, Charlotte, Houston, Jersey City, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, East Palo Alto, Mexico City, Santa Clara, Sao Paulo, Tampa, Miami, Brooklyn, Columbus, New York, Sacramento, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Amman, Milan, Cairo, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, Istanbul, Beijing, Hyderabad, Shenzhen, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

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• I left a stable job to pursue freelance tech work because I wanted more flexibility and freedom.
• My family, especially my mother, was concerned about my choice and didn't understand.
• After some trial and error, I finally found a stable career in the freelance tech world.

I was lucky to land a job immediately after college as an IT support intern, which later transitioned into full-time employment. For three years, I followed the path most expected of me. Eventually, I felt trapped and chose to resign.

That one decision set many things in motion, including a complete shift in how I viewed work.

My mother was the first to voice her concern. She had always pictured a traditional life for me: a stable job, a marriage, and a family. But I wanted something different.

"Samedi, where are you going?" she asked when she heard the news. I shared an outline of my plans but kept the finer details to myself.

In Africa, where I live, stable employment is seen as the cornerstone of success. My decision to freelance was culturally dissonant.

The pressure mounted as relatives mobilized to "help." A cousin offered a position at a leading telco. Family members called with job suggestions, each well-meaning but missing the point; I wasn't looking for another traditional role.

I sought something they couldn't understand: the freedom to build a borderless career.

It wasn't easy to jump into freelance work

No one in my family had taken this path before, so I had no role model. I had to do this mostly on my own.

Freelancing wasn't easy. When I left my job, I had no savings and struggled for months. It was a humbling experience.

A year later, I decided to move countries and needed a soft landing to acclimate to a new culture. That's when I decided to go back to a full-time job. I landed a junior web developer position at a media company. It felt like a fresh start, but the role wasn't what I thought it would be. The demands were relentless — late nights, weekend shifts, and tight deadlines. The long hours drained me, and I became burned out and increasingly frustrated.

Eventually, the job that once seemed like an opportunity had become a burden, and it was time to move on.

When I tendered my resignation, my managing director asked me, "Where are you going?"

It's a simple question in traditional work culture, where careers follow linear paths. But in the gig economy, the answer isn't always neat. I gave a vague response about joining another company, though truthfully, I was stepping back into the unknown to take another shot at freelancing. I'd tasted the freedom of freelancing and wanted to do it again. Thankfully, this time, I had more clients to work with.

I eventually found stability in flexibility

My second shot at freelancing has been much more successful. I've worn many hats: web designer, content marketer, copyeditor, and technical writer. Currently, I work as a content marketer and digital career coach.

This variety is simply the nature of modern tech work. Each role has added to my skill set, allowing me to serve clients across time zones.

While it hasn't been easy, the career I built outside a traditional role has been rewarding and freeing. All the opportunities have helped me grow my skill sets. I've built a stable career in my own way.

Bridging the generational divide will take time

Still, my mom's skepticism comes from a place of care and experience. Her preference for traditional employment is understandable in Africa, where economic stability is precarious. Even though I have made a successful career out of freelance, she and my family are still confused about what I do for a living.

But the nature of work is evolving. When companies downsize or restructure, freelancers with diverse clients can adjust more quickly than those tied to one employer. I feel more stable in my career now more than ever, and I hope my family realizes that one day.

I've now realized that the future is borderless. Younger generations like me are becoming global citizens, working across time zones and cultures in ways our parents never imagined.

The question is no longer, "Where are you going?" but "How far can you reach?"

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is loosening some of its policies in an effort to avoid limiting free speech.
• Meta will remove restrictions on topics like gender, which means users may see more controversial opinions in their feeds.
• The policy shift is expected to change how your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads feeds appear.

Don't be surprised if your Instagram or Facebook feed looks different as Mark Zuckerberg's overhaul of Meta's moderation policies rolls out in the coming weeks.

In addition to replacing its third-party fact-checking system with community notes similar to Elon Musk's X, Meta is also looking to change things up with a return to promoting political content. Other changes include eliminating restrictions on topics like immigration or gender and shifting its enforcement policies on lower-severity violations.

"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes.

So what will Facebook, Instagram, and Threads look like with the changes? Based on Zuckerberg's comments, this is how your feed could appear different.

You'll likely see a wider range of views — including controversial ones

In the next few weeks, you might start to notice more controversial content on your social media feeds.

In an announcement about the new changes, Meta said it "removed millions of pieces of content" daily in December 2024 — and that "one to two out of every 10" of those pieces of content may not have violated Meta's policies.

In an effort to reduce instances of accidentally removing content through its automated moderation tools did not violate a policy, Meta said in a blog post that it will remove restrictions on topics frequently discussed in political conversations and debates, like "immigration, gender identity, and gender."

"It's not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms," the company said in the announcement.

What does that mean in practice? An update Tuesday to Meta's "Hateful Conduct" policy offers more detail.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

Posts that are 'lower-severity violations' won't be reviewed unless people report them

Meta will also be loosening its guidelines around enforcement of policy violations and raising the bar for content removal.

The company said its automated systems have resulted in "too many mistakes and too much content being censored," as well as demoted content that is predicted to violate its guidelines.

Moving forward, Meta platforms will focus on addressing "illegal and high-severity violations," including terrorism, child sexual exploitation, or drugs.

For "less severe policy violations," the company will rely on users reporting the content before it considers taking action. Meta will also eliminate most demotions and require a "much higher degree of confidence" before content is removed. The company will also raise its standards around removing content by requiring multiple reviewers to remove content.

You'll see more politics and news content

Following what it described as feedback from people not wanting to see political content on their feeds, Facebook announced changes in 2021 to reduce the amount of political content seen, including content about elections or social issues.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company referred to that approach as "pretty blunt" and said it would start recommending political content again on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The political content will take a more "personalized approach," by ranking and showing content based on users' interactions with content, like liking or viewing different posts.

"We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see," the announcement said.

In 2022, Meta said that political content only made up about 3% of posts on Facebook. So the change doesn't necessarily mean your feed will be flooded with political news and content — but it may be an increase from what you've seen in recent years.

You won't see fact-check notes anymore — instead, you'll sometimes see community notes

Part of the shift will be focused on reversing changes that Meta executive Joel Kaplan said the company made to moderate content that resulted in "harmless content" being removed and people "wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail.'"

Meta is now ending its third-party fact-checking program, which was implemented in 2016. Instead, it said it will launch a community notes program over the next couple of months, which will follow rival social network X's approach of allowing contributors to add context to content.

By eliminating its fact-checkers, Meta will no longer demote fact-checked content or include full-screen warnings that users have to click through before viewing a post. Instead, users will see a "much less obtrusive label indicating" and have the option to view additional content, Kaplan said.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment by Business Insider.

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