Panera Pulls Pay-What-You-Want Chili

Panera Bread’s latest pay-what-you-can experiment was pulled from St. Louis stores on Wednesday. The chain, most know as St. Louis Bread Co. in the region, will be retool the concept and bring it back to stores during the winter as a seasonal offering, according to the chain's founder.

It was called the Meal of Shared Responsibility. It was launched in March, and entailed a single menu item, Turkey Chili in a Bread Bowl, where customers set their own price for the purchase. The suggested retail price for the chili is $5.89, but any person that ordered it could pay nothing, one-cent, $10 or whatever denomination they liked.

The idea was that those going hungry could get a meal for whatever they could afford to pay, while those who pay above the company’s cost make up the difference, according to AZ Central.

Click here to read AZ Central's full article. 

But after launch, program participation fizzled.

“It didn’t do badly,” Ron Shaich, Panera Bread Co.’s chief executive told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “We just didn’t feel we were making as much of a difference as we would have liked.”

Read the full St. Louis Post Dispatch article here.

A handful of locations—including the Delmar Loop—saw heavy usage. But Shaich said the program was not being utilized much in most of its stores by those for which the program was intended.

The Sunset Hills-based company’s efforts to help feed people in need and raise awareness about hunger goes back to 2010. That's when Panera opened its first nonprofit bakery-cafe in Clayton as part of Panera Cares. The concept has since been expanded to four other locations nationwide.

At the nonprofit stores, there are suggested donation amounts, but customers can pay whatever they wish for any item.

Panera has other charitable endeavors. Its Operation Dough-Nation program has donated millions of dollars in unsold baked goods.