If there’s one thing the average leftist rarely gets accused of, it’s being rational. Increasingly, the politics emanating from the Left is completely detached from reality, as it’s pure idealistic utopianism based purely on one’s “feelings.”
This is reflected in any number of policies put forward by the Left, like their desire for open borders, increased government handouts, draconian tax rates, forced diversity, etc. While it’s bad enough that these policies are often pushed at the national level, every now and then leftists practice what they preach and implement such policies at a local level. A recent example of how their feelings-based approach to running things works can be seen in Missouri, where one restaurant let ideology facilitate its downfall.
As reported at the Daily Mail, to absolutely no rational person’s surprise, a Panera Bread Company restaurant in St. Louis that allowed patrons to “pay what they want” for a meal is closing its doors after 8 years.
Ron Shaich, the Panera founder and Executive Chairman, told reporters that the branch, located in Clayton, Missouri, is going to close because it’s on a month-to-month lease and the store would have required a big investment. The restaurant is one of 2,000 bakery-cafes that Panera operates.
“The nature of the economics did not make sense,” Shaich said. No, no they did not.
The restaurant opened in 2010 in an existing Panera-run restaurant just blocks away from the St. Louis County government buildings, so it had plenty of potential customers.
The idea for this particular cafe was to encourage the more well-to-do patrons to pay more if they could, which would then be offset less financially well off guests that chose not to pay much. In effect, a microcosm of what the Left preaches constantly, for the “rich” to pay their fair share so everyone else can pay less/receive more handouts, except in this scenario a choice was given.
Shaich said that since the cafe opened, it served about 500,000 meals “all at no set prices, as a gift to the community.” While that’s certainly a nice sentiment and goal, the reality is that people aren’t as generous themselves as they usually demand of others.
Shaich said on average customers paid about 85 percent of the suggested price, proving, he said, “that people are fundamentally good.”
“We loved it, it worked well, it proved that the idea would work,” Shaich said. Panera has tried the ideas in several cities: Chicago, Dearborn, Michigan, Portland, Oregon, and Boston, but after this latest closure, the Boston branch will be the only one still open.
One wonders if folks actually paid the 100 percent suggested price if they could have stayed in business. I guess we’ll never know for sure, but one that’s evident is that “pay what you want” is not a viable business scheme.
Source: Daily Mail