Get ready San Diegans. Another bona fide franchise is about to mushroom. The owners of Arizona Bread Company, a new bakery in Mission Valley that happens to sell sandwiches, say they will open between 13 to 18 additional locations upon our yeastless landscape in the next couple of years.

Just as man can’t survive on bread alone, neither could any California bakery that fails to incorporate kettles of soup and a panini grill into the operation. And for those bakers peddling fresh and crusty loaves outside of a mall or strip plaza, the only dough they’ll end up making is the kind that sticks to their cuticles.

Strategically located in the Ralphs shopping plaza off Friars Road, the Scottsdale-based bread company appears to be taking its cue from Boudin Sourdough Bakery and Café, sans the phony San Francisco ambience and popular bread bowls brimming with clam chowder. Barren cement flooring and abstract art suited for a furniture store dominate the open seating area. And attractive bread shelves, though devoid of sustenance by late-afternoon, provide early lunchers with an eyeful of artisan breads that include Asiago cheese, rustic rosemary and sun-dried tomato, as well as focaccia, baguettes and braided Challah.

Bread aside, the conclusion I’ve made about the food here (based on three visits) is that it is overpriced and about as monotonous as the state of Arizona itself. With the exception of an Albacore Tuna Sandwich on country-Italian bread, and The Executive panini, packed with roast beef and red peppers, most of us can crank out more appealing sandwiches at home for a quarter of the cost.

The East Coast panini with a cup of soup and beverage, for example, totals almost $13. The sandwich is comprised of pastrami, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut pressed between flavorless “European rye” that broke apart like a cracker when I nipped into it. As with all paninis, the bread is toasted without any butter or oil, which taunts the palate if you’re hankering for a true New York-style grilled deli sandwich.

What appeared like dried saliva tracks on my companion’s soupspoon proved a hygienic disappointment as I had just finished remarking that the table surfaces and counters looked so clean. After plucking fresh silverware from a dispenser at the gourmet coffee bar, he polished off his crock of stark-white Clam Chowder with indifference.

A bowl of Chicken Chili accompanying my sandwich earned fewer points, as it tasted like something straight out of an Amish cookbook. Thick in consistency, it contained lots of mini white beans and chicken that I suspected came from a can. Pass the Tabasco sauce, please!

Other menu choices include soups of the day (Potato Leek, Shrimp gumbo, Matzo Ball and Mushroom Barley), plus your usual tuna, egg and chicken salad sandwiches and various baked goods from the breakfast lineup.

Service here is friendly, if not saccharine. Yet in each visit my food was delivered with a thing or two missing, such as the colored tortilla chips that top the Southwest Salad – or a slice of bread that accompanies the soups. In one instance, the soup itself was forgotten when I ordered a meal from the combo menu.

Arizona Bread Company is for daytime shoppers and those lunchtime working folk who care less about culinary adventure than they do with convenience. The hearty and golden breads lure them in. And the mediocre sandwiches and salads, I suspect, will somehow keep them coming back.