Bakery Chain Panera Opens Nonprofit Restaurant

In a first for a national restaurant chain, Panera Bread has started a prototype nonprofit outlet at which customers decide how much to pay and leave the money in a donation box rather than a cash register, USA Today reports.

Rather than collecting money, cashiers at the St. Louis restaurant hand patrons receipts showing what they would have paid for their chosen items at a typical Panera outlet and directing them to the store’s donation boxes.

Ron Shaich, the company’s former CEO who now runs the Panera Foundation, said he hopes to open hundreds of such Panera Cares Cafes in communities where the chain operates.

“I’m trying to find out what human nature is all about,” said Mr. Shaich, who stepped down last week as head of the firm he transformed from a small St. Louis bread-maker into a $2.8-billion-a-year national chain.