“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.”
Panera Cares™ Cafe was a socialist experiment in food service where customers paid whatever they wanted for food.
If you were wealthy, they expected you to pay more.
If you were poor, they expected you to pay less.
Only someone with a PhD would ever think that this would possibly work.
And sure enough, the business tanked.
Panera founder and Executive Chairman Ron Shaich told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the St. Louis Bread Co. Cares Community Cafe in Clayton, Missouri, is imminently due to close because it was on a month-to-month lease and the store would have required a big investment.
‘The nature of the economics did not make sense,’ Shaich said.
The idea for the Clayton cafe was to encourage people who could afford to pay the suggested price or more to do so, in effect subsidizing those who were more financially stretched.
‘We loved it, it worked well, it proved that the idea would work,’ Shaich said.
Uh-huh. It worked so well that it put them out of business.