{"id":730528,"date":"2010-05-20T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10006853"},"modified":"2010-05-20T16:22:50","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T20:22:50","slug":"ex-panera-bread-ceo-opens-commie-not-for-profit-eatery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/730528","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Panera Bread CEO Opens Commie Not-For-Profit Eatery"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

What is a meal at Panera Bread worth to you? A former Panera location in a prosperous St. Louis suburb has reopened as “St. Louis Bread Company Cares,” a restaurant where customers can select a meal, then pay what they think the meal is worth–or as much as they can afford. If customers can’t afford to pay anything, they can volunteer to work there. A not-for-profit foundation runs the restaurant, which opened this week.<\/p>\n

The location has the same menu as regular Panera locations and is part of the chain’s distribution network, but the new business model seemed to make customers’ brains explode.<\/p>\n

Dawn Frierdich, 52, came in to buy three loaves of bread an iced tea. She asked how much the drink would cost.<\/p>\n

“About $1.85,” said the 21-year-old cashier, Michael Miller.<\/p>\n

And the whole order?<\/p>\n

“It would be, like, $12,” Miller told her, reminding her she didn’t have to pay if she didn’t want to. Frierdich tried to hand him $12 in cash, but he directed her to put it in the donation jar.<\/p>\n

“This is a little hard. I just can’t wrap my head around this,” Frierdich said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the outlet can support itself, Panera hopes to expand the model across the country. <\/p>\n

New Panera location says pay what you want<\/a> [AP]
\nPanera: Pay what you can afford<\/a> [St. Louis Business Journal]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is a meal at Panera Bread worth to you? A former Panera location in a prosperous St. Louis suburb has reopened as “St. Louis Bread Company Cares,” a restaurant where customers can select a meal, then pay what they think the meal is worth–or as much as they can afford. If customers can’t afford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-342I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}