Panera’s Charged lemonade.
Photographer: Ian Shiver. Prop Stylist: Kelsi Windmiller. Retouching: Zach VitaleGrieving Families Blame Panera’s Charged Lemonade for Leaving a Deadly Legacy
The company has long promoted what it called healthy alternatives to fast food. Now it’s being sued for its foray into energy drinks.
It was around 7 o’clock on a Saturday night, and Victoria Conroy was still in her pajamas. The University of Pennsylvania junior had recently awakened from an afternoon nap after staying up late the evening before at a party for her a cappella club. Now some of her friends were waiting in the living room of her apartment. They’d tried to persuade Conroy to go out with them, but she was too tired.
Just then, everyone’s phones started to ring. Something terrible had happened to one of Conroy’s roommates, Sarah Katz, who’d left the apartment 20 minutes earlier to go to a birthday party in the bar downstairs in their building. Katz had arrived, hugged everybody and collapsed. “She’s having a seizure!” Conroy remembers a caller telling her. “You need to come down here! Like, get down here right now!”