chanel
Silver Member
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. It's a concept that has never been tested by a restaurant chain and that marks a new career for Ron Shaich, who stepped down as Panera's CEO last week.
"I'm trying to find out what human nature is all about," says Shaich, 56, who has converted a former Panera-owned restaurant in an urban area of St. Louis into a non-profit restaurant dubbed Saint Louis Bread Company Cares Cafe.
Non-profit Panera cafe: Take what you need, pay what you can - USATODAY.com
Predictions on how soon it will go belly up?