Non-profit Panera cafe: Take what you need, pay what you can

[Sporkman]

Non-profit Panera cafe: Take what you need, pay what you can

By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

Imagine walking into a Panera Bread and picking out anything you wanted to eat or drink — then, at the end of the line, instead of handing your money to a cashier, you faced a donation box.

What would you do if you knew that some of the money you placed in the box would be used to train at-risk youths or to feed folks lacking funds to feed themselves?

That's what Panera Bread is trying to find out this week in an outside-the-box experiment in St. Louis...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2010-05-18-panerabread18_ST_N.htm

[dearingj]

Now that is what I call ubuntu :)

[pookiebear]

cool idea

[samalex]

Great idea! I've been a huge fan of Panera Bread for years and until we moved across town from the local Panera cafe my wife and I used to stop by there at least once or twice a week for morning beagles and coffee before work.

What I do like is our local Panera donates all the left over bread (which they have BAGS of) to the local shelters each afternoon and evening. I don't know of Panera in general has a good community sense, but I've liked what I've seen them do over the years. In our are they were one of the first to offer free wifi to customers which I always thought was classic since there's a Starbucks almost next door that charges (or used to charge anyway) $$$ per hour for wifi.

Sam

[pwnst*r]

Hm. Good idea for consumers, but as a business there would be no way to forecast sales which would make it impossible to staff/order/stock appropriately.

[Sporkman]

A month later, the verdict is in: It turns out people are basically good.

Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country, plans to expand the nonprofit model around the nation, opening two more locations within months.

"I guess I would say it's performing better than we even might have hoped in our cynical moments, and it's living up to our best sense of humanity," Shaich said in an interview...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100625/ap_on_bi_ge/us_panera_pay_what_you_wish

[NightwishFan]

That is a really nice idea. I hope it works out well for them.