Panera?s Pricing Produces Philanthropic Propensity

This post is about FREE FOOD! (I suppose that would have made for a more attractive title…)

If you had a chance to watch Rip! A Remix Manifesto (you know, the movie I wrote about a couple days ago?), you will have learned a little bit about an alternative form of artist compensation – the “pay-what-you-want” model. If you didn’t watch it (and why not?!), you should know that at least a handful of popular as well as not-so-popular musical artists have seen some success with this model.

I’m not here to debate about whether or not it can actually work for everybody, since tons of other people on the internet have taken up that discussion already. Today I’m interested in whether or not the pay-what-you-want model can do for the tangible world: stuff that isn’t MP3 files or downloadable TV episodes.

I was a little amazed today to read about a Panera Bread restaurant location in St. Louis which allows people to name their own price for the food that theyget there. Yes, food is available for free at the restaurant. When you walk in the door, a greeter politely explains that it’s not a soup kitchen and that there are suggested prices listed next to menu items to give you an idea of what the food costs.

As it turns out, the people who can afford to pay a little extra for their food don’t mind doing so and do it quite frequently – enough to make up for those who actually cannot afford to pay full price and still keep the business afloat. Yes, a handful of jerks take free sandwiches even though they can pay. But for the most part folks are being honorable when they go sandwich-hunting. Panera will be donating the store’s eventual revenues to a charity, which seems like it could be one of the reasons that people are willing to be a little more generous.

So this alternative economic model has jumped the gap between the digital and physical realms, which I’ve always had a difficult time envisioning. Will it work in the long term? I have no clue (though with my imagination running rampant I’m inclined to say “probably”). But it’s sure an intriguing experiment!