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Ever felt like $6 was too much for a garden salad at Panera? The popular restaurant chain has hopped on the “as you wish” bandwagon with a St. Louis store sans price tags — in other words, that garden salad can cost you nothing, everything or just what you have in your pocket at the time.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the sign above the deli counter says it all: “Take what you need, leave your fair share.” And while Panera seems more focused on the entrepreneurial experiment, (like the plaque said, the idea is fairness, not freeloading) similar experiments “lose the digits” for different reasons — from homelessness and poverty to the general social well-being that results from sharing.
Think the 2003 One World Everybody Eats campaign, Denver’s SAME (So All May Eat) Cafe, even Evanston’s own Inspiration Cafe, where “men and women could sit down, order off a menu and be served.”
But what happens when we throw in social and interpersonal factors? Think of the difference between Terra Bite Lounge’s envelope-and-metal-box system versus Panera’s tip jar method: one allows for customers to exert an unspoken social standard, while the other maintains complete anonymity. Along with that comes the psychological anxiety of underpaying — if I don’t pay, maybe others won’t as well, and then places like these won’t be able to stay open for long.
If Panera’s experiment works, more economics-defying restaurants could follow. Could Evanston be next? I know I’m down for a $2 Cuban Chicken Panini.