Timely article, given today’s communist green agenda.
Panera’s Socialist Pay-What-You-Want Restaurant Implodes: Students, Homeless Mob The Place
https://www.dailywire.com/news/43105/paneras-socialist-pay-what-you-want-restaurant-paul-bois?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwtwitter
“Panera Cares went on to open five locations in cities like Dearborn, Portland, Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis. None of the restaurants were self-sustaining, with some locations reportedly being “mobbed” by students along with homeless people looking for a free meal.
“The Portland-based Panera Cares was reportedly only recouping between 60 and 70 percent of its total costs,” reports Eater. “The losses were attributed to students who ‘mobbed’ the restaurant and ate without paying, as well as homeless patrons who visited the restaurant for every meal of the week. The location eventually limited the homeless to ‘a few meals a week.’”
Though Shaich said the restaurants tried to educate people about “sharing responsibly, people ultimately came to the locations for a handout.”
“We had to help them understand that this is a café of shared responsibility and not a handout,” Shaich said in a 2011 interview about the Portland location. “It can’t serve as a shelter and we can’t have community organizations sending everybody down.”
Since 2016, the Panera Cares locations have been closing down one-by-one. The last remaining shop in Boston will be closing in just 10 days. After Panera was sold to private equity firm JAB Holding Company, Shaich stepped down as CEO in 2017. He admitted to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2018 that “the nature of the economics did not make sense.”
I had read about this.
Gee, funny how this doesn’t work.
The dims need to learn from history, look up the early days of Pilgrim Jamestown and see that socialism didn’t work then, look at Venezuela to see that socialism doesn’t work now.