Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Ron and Panera make a difference

When I first heard of this idea from Panera Bread's Ron Shaich, I was impressed with both its elegance and its humanity. In simplest terms, it is, "Eat what you need to. Pay what you can." It turns out that some people will pay more for their meals so that other members of the community who might be short of cash can afford theirs. You can read more about it at this AP story.

Here's an update Ron sent to some friends a few weeks ago:

This week marked a significant milestone for Panera. Our first Panera Cares cafe, which opened its doors to the community on May 16, 2010, in Clayton, MO, celebrated its first anniversary. After that came additional Panera Cares cafes in Dearborn, Michigan and Portland, Oregon. Today Panera Cares is serving 10,000 to 20,000 people a week and our cafes are now expected to serve 500,000 to 1 Million meals in the next year. Each café has been a success and each has become self-sustaining. As well we graduated our first class of at risk youth this past week and each “at risk” young person is now working and contributing to society.

One highlight of the week was when anchor Brian Williams announced on NBC Nightly News that an earlier piece on its “Making a Difference” series had inspired Panera to develop the idea for Panera Cares and that NBC would be airing a story on the Panera Cares concept.

Here's the clip. Click here if you cannot see the video.

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4 comments:

Amy said...

From Facebook:

I saw this on the news this morning, it came with a smile.

Anonymous said...

This concept originated many years ago with SAME Cafe in Denver, CO. Panera has previously publicly stated they were inspired by SAME and started doing it for Panera as well. It's all for the greater good, but give credit where credit is due: http://www.soallmayeat.org/

Alex said...

From Facebook:

Thanks, Paul. Nice to be reminded what we can accomplish when we couple a good vision with good execution of the plan. I admire the people leading and otherwise involved in this and appreciate the demonstration of how authentically held values can inspire and energize people-- when the right thing to do is, rather than do to what you think you can get away with, to do what you can. It's an encouraging example of trying something that, quite incredibly, sounds like a innovation: compassionate business that also makes money.

Stan said...

Anonymous said: "This concept originated many years ago with SAME Cafe in Denver, CO. Panera has previously publicly stated they were inspired by SAME and started doing it for Panera as well. It's all for the greater good, but give credit where credit is due."

Duh, it clearly says right in the video clip that the CEO of Panera saw the previous report about SAME Cafe on NBC News, and that's what inspired Panera Cares. I'm not sure how they can give any more credit than that.

Sometimes I wonder how people can miss things that are so carefully explained to them.