The last of the five non-profit eateries created by the Panera Bread will be closing February 15th in Boston after failing to be financially sustainable. “The program was called “Panera Cares,” and it was designed to serve food to low-income people when it was launched nine years ago. The ‘pay-what-you-want’ business model allowed patrons visiting the locations to eat for a donation — or not.” More
35 Comments on Panera Bread To End Its Half-Baked Experiment With Socialism
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HaHaHaHa……………..
Who did not see this coming?!!!
It’s hard to imagine that wasn’t a big time profit maker. How did they survive for nine years?
“The program was called “Panera Cares,” ”
Guess they don’t care THAT much. Probably wrote the program off as advertising. Or does the IRS allow deductions for virtue signalling?
Two of them closed up in my country. The “No Guns” decal on their windows is responsible for that.
All the liberals who supported this can’t understand how their 25cent meals didn’t cover the costs!😂
“The “No Guns” decal on their windows is responsible for that.”
Brad, a lot of folks are leery of people who sleep under bridges, don’t bathe, talk to Jesus out loud and pack heat. If that free soup and sammich ain’t to their likein’, who knows what will happen.
Well …. Surprise, surprise, surprise!!
Wait a sec, this is an admission they don’t care?
Get woke go broke!
Those that live in and around Boston, you still have a week to score some “pay-as-you-go” meals off of Panera.
There is no truth to this, if they really wanted to experiment with socialism, they would leave their garbage for the third estate to paw through.
Reminds me of the stories about Bob Jovi’s restaurant where people pay what they want or they can work off the bill if they so choose. that made me think of several points:
1) I am sure the local the restaurant workers union loved that (and I hope Bon Jovi paid the equivalent of $15.00 per hour.
2) Since people were receiving “pay” for their work, how did he do the income tax deductions (did they fill out W4’s?) and social security and other required deductions?
Who insures those people when they are working at the resaurant if the are not actual employees?
4) Where can you go to work in a restaurant without a food handlers certificate of some kind?
I love how liberals enact a bunch of regulations for the “benefit” of people, then celebrate when how good people are for not obeying them.
I also love how rich celebrities celebrate people who do something, such as own a restaurant, as a hobby then show off how great they are by not trying to make a profit while they can support their ventures by the tons of money they make from their day jobs while they condemn people for who similar ventures ARE their day jobs and they need the profits to stay afloat.
Stumbled into Portland Panera knowing nothing about their foray into socialism. Dweeby little gay greeter was going apoplectic espousing their donation policy and was about to wet himself bragging about being a non-profit. Was distracted by large number of filthy, smelly people. The place was dirty, garbage all over the place. Have not been to a Panera since.
It pisses Mrs Frank off when I won’t go to Panera. First I tell her the food is average, second I contend that socialists shouldn’t need a capitalist to help them out.
Plus if I can go to a locally owned food place it helps the economy and decreases my chance of foodborne illness.
So, college kids who have been taught everything should be free and a RIGHT! didn’t pay anything.
Was Panera disappointed?
@Frank February 7, 2019 at 12:49 pm
> Plus if I can go to a locally owned food place it helps the economy and decreases my chance of foodborne illness.
At least you care about the health and well being of Panera (Chipotle, Au Bon Pain, etc.) customers. Some of us are hoping for interspecies love, between the heritage Listeria and newer, more American than American, Ebola. Yes, Madame Hillary. Deplorable. I know.
“Panera Cares!”
More about profit, apparently, than about whatever it was they were pretending to care about.
A corporation, if it “cares,” should try to provide a good product (or service) at a reasonable price. If it doesn’t “care,” it should provide shitty service (or products) at an exorbitant price (see USPS, GM, or TSA, for instance (most any Union outfit)).
izlamo delenda est …
Well, there goes my free lunch. Score another point for Milton Friedman.
“Houck noted further that over time Panera Cares officials became jaded by those who took advantage of the chain’s hospitality without recompense and as such the atmosphere among workers in the locations began to sour.”
“Patrons reported security guards roaming the entrance and ‘glaring at customers,’” Houck noted. “People working with at-risk residents described incidents during which they were rudely told off by managers for ‘abusing the system.’”
“Others,” Houck added, “described situations in which visitors trying to participate in the pay-as-you-can system feeling shamed for not being able to afford the suggested donation amount.”
No kidding?! The dumbest thing of all is that if Panera’s brainiacs behind this ‘experiment’ had any real history lessons in their schools as children, they would have known EXACTLY how this would end — and without all the drama. Fools.
“Half-baked” experiment.
I see what you did there, you merry punster
It must’ve taken ten tries at it before hitting on just the phrasing, glad you appreciate the effort. – Dr. Tar
One of the best places to get an above average lunch or dinner at below average prices is your local community colleges that have culinary schools. If they have a pastry/desserts program, that’s even better.
And no snotty $15/min wage and forced tipping involved!
@AbigailAdams February 7, 2019 at 1:49 pm
> One of the best places to get an above average lunch or dinner at below average prices is your local community colleges that have culinary schools.
As with the originator, I’m sure your intentions are good. But that’s the biggest “Then let them eat cake” I’ve seen, in quite a while.
Lowell
These were stores in upper scale malls. Half my county (not country) has a carry permit. It’s tough to survive when you eliminate 50% of your market.
We have a big Regal Cinema movie theater in our “Town Center”. They’re talking about closing it down. Same problem.
Anonymous — “let them eat cake”?! Don’t know what you mean by that. Is it supposed to be some sort of put down?
Most culinary arts programs at community colleges also run a variety of on-campus restaurants. In Seattle, for example, SCC runs four such restaurants on their Capitol Hill campus — just up the hill from downtown. In the summer quarter they run five. All enthusiastically open to the public. It’s not a pay-what-you-can deal, either, but the prices — for the kinds of meals offered — are more than reasonable, since the students are using high quality ingredients prepared in state-of-the-art kitchens, with incredibly gourmet techniques. They are, after all, training to become world-class chefs.
Having a “real” customer base allows the students to gain experience in the “front of the house” as well as in the kitchen. It’s a win/win for everyone, so I don’t get your comment. Please explain.
@AA – They can type three paragraphs but can’t type a name.
Okay — so here’s another, completely different Seattle program, privately funded and created through industry volunteers, that teaches a man to fish, rather than enable socialists to leech: It’s called “Fare Start”, and it’s purpose is to give people who have very broken lives the opportunity to work in the food service industry.
As you listen to these peoples’ stories, notice the basic difference between what a hand-out and a hand-up produces. One cannot conclude that socialistic programs that take from some and give to others is anything but a cruel joke that, in the end, solves nothing.
Here you go, Anonymous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICvJOm8s5Js
Fare Start. Check this out: https://www.farestart.org/
If there’s a Fare Start-like program in your city, you can support their work just by having a great meal at one of their restaurants. It’s not a hand-out and it’s not about virtue signalling — it’s about having a great meal that just happens to help people get their lives back together. Everyone wins.
@AbigailAdams February 7, 2019 at 2:28 pm
> Anonymous — “let them eat cake”?! Don’t know what you mean by that. Is it supposed to be some sort of put down?
That’s why I wrote “I’m sure your intentions are good.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the history of it… maybe put down the shovel, and search teh interwebz? Then feel free to sling dirt from that hole. (Or listen to @Different Tim, and just repurpose the shovel.)
Anonymous — Just what I figured. You’ve started down a path and hit a dead end. It’s not that I don’t know the oft-misquoted quote, it’s your use of it that doesn’t make sense. You can’t explain your barb because you don’t know what you’re talking about. It was just something you heard that sounds good to you.
I love cake!
I only use my shovel to scrape up anonymous garbage!
Are there no poorhouses? Are there no prisons?
They are kinda slow on the uptake
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2013/02/panera_cares_pay-what-you-can.html
Anonymous — You have a talent for cherry picking literature out of context and then “J’accuse!” (Oxford standard: An accusation, especially one made publicly in response to a perceived injustice; a public denunciation.)
What’s so odd and laughable is that you’re apparently saying that no entity should be trusted with the volunteer purse to provide for the truly needy. But the second point is your sentiment that (I assume you mean conservatives) people are not motivated to provide charity to the truly needy.
So before you j’accuse tell us the last time you volunteered or contributed, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the needy that actually inconvenienced you or took from your table something you noticed?
Would love to see a ‘pay-what-you-want’ Panera Bread opened in Venezuela and watch the unrestrained effects of socialism close the store in minutes – Nothing paid for, employees running for their lives, nothing left, not a crumb.
On second thought, the supplies would never make it to the store location once off the plane. The looting – epic.
Panera Bread trust fund flakes are only playing at socialism.
99th Squad Leader — Yea, the supplies wouldn’t have made it off the plane.
Funny how the story of the Little Red Hen chronicles the growing and grinding of wheat, the making of the dough and the baking of the bread, and at each step the Little Red Hen asks, “who will help me?” No one wants to help until she asks “Who will help me eat the bread?”
Those little stories were so important.
Stupidness never sleeps.
There was a guy in the 19th Century who stood on a street corner (in NYC, I think) every day at an appointed time waiting for a rich man to stop by and agree to underwrite his plan to establish socialism. Years went by but no wealthy man ever took up the challenge.
But the SS (stupid socialists) keep trying with their evil plans for the rest of us.