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Panera suspends 'pay-what-you-can-afford' test

July 11, 2013

Panera Bread has suspended its pay-what-you-can menu item it had been testing in its St. Louis stores for the past couple months. The chain removed the Meal of Shared Responsibility — Turkey chili in a Bread Bowl — this week, according to the AP, but said it will come back next winter as a seasonal offering.

The goal was to give anyone access to a nutritious 850-calorie meal at a price they could afford, while customers with higher incomes would pay more than the $6 suggested price.

Founder Ron Shaich told the AP that the chain served 15,000 of the meals, but the experiment had flaws. Few needy people, for example, participated because most Panera locations in the region are in middle-class and affluent areas. Another pitfall was poor marketing.

"We were very capable of raising the level of awareness about food security in short spurts," Shaich said in the interview. But as in-store marketing about the meal was replaced and employees stopped explaining the concept to customers, "it seemed to fall into the background. We decided the best thing to do is pull it and retool it."

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