A restaurant tries the honor system

[disappoint]

Interesting. I wonder if this will work for very long. A system that relies on "good people"? If there were more good than bad, more generous than selfish, I think maybe our economy wouldn't be in the shitter to begin with.
What do you think?

“Take what you need, leave your fair share.”
That’s the new policy at a Panera Bread café in suburban St. Louis, where diners are asked to pay what they want for their food, leaving the money in a donation box—and leaving some wondering if a restaurant can successfully serve up a side order of responsibility.
“Some will call it a hot trend, others a pipe dream, but the notion of letting diners choose what they pay for their meals has been gaining traction over the last decade,” The New York Times reports, fueled in part by social entrepreneurs “who believe that making a profit and doing good are not mutually exclusive.”

http://responsibility-project.liber...stem#fbid=bzI57SfvaHx&src=OB_B278_HonorSystem

 

[Crono]

It would work as a novel lone restaurant or a few, not so much if they tried to expand the system all over the country. The honor system only works in very controlled environments and on a small scale.

 

[Leopardos]

Its will be like:

1- Homeless guy eat there and pay 0.1Cent ( its all what he got ).
2- He go somewhere where he consider "Home" and tell his friends.
3- His friends will bring more and more people paying the same amount.
4- Restaurant claim bankruptcy
5- Restaurant owner will say: " Ooooohhh, Bad idea"

 

[HamburgerBoy]

We live in a world where people are willing to wait in hour long lines for a free meal of X worth $5. The fat, disgusting trash will flock to this just as they attempt to extract every last calorie at the buffets they inhabit.

This model works to an extent in more refined elements of human consumption such as music, where such "people" would not contribute to begin, but here we're talking about the most primal urges of man.

 

[Baptismbyfire]

It's like Humble Bundles in a way. Most people chip in the least amount they need to get all the games, while some people go out of their way to donate many times more.

Now, considering that all the money will go to the restaurant, and not to any charity (unlike Humble Bundles), and the fact that there is no least amount they have to contribute to get the food (unlike Humble Bundles), I don't see how the restaurant can stay open for long.

I think a better system would be averaging the amount "donated" each week, and then setting that as the minimal price. Then, if people wanted to give more, they could. It would also help keep the bums out.

 

[HeXen]

We used to have this box full of snacks at work that said something like Grandma's honesty system or whatever. take a candy bar and leave the change in the container.
0 candybars left and 0 change. didn't last long at all. these are the kind of ideas that only pot smoking hippies come up with.

 

[Sixguns]

This will never last here. People are too greedy to even give it a shot. What would happen is people are going to say it was only worth very little or nothing. And like Leopardos said, once word gets to the hobos, its game over.

 

[Ichinisan]

I'm pretty sure I heard of this a long time ago, and then heard of the restaurant's failure.

 

[MrMuppet]

This model works to an extent in more refined elements of human consumption such as music, where such "people" would not contribute to begin, but here we're talking about the most primal urges of man.

It would work for food, if you could make unlimited identical copies of the food at virtually no cost.

The problem is that any piece of food is a piece of physical property and thus a naturally scarce resource, its natural scarcity entailing a natural conflict that needs to be solved. Physical property is a solution to that natural conflict.

Binary patterns, on the other hand, are frequently claimed to be some supposed "intellectual" property, but information is not naturally scarce and hence does not entail any such natural conflict needing to be solved. Rather, "intellectual" property introduces new artificial conflicts where none were before.

It's also interesting to note how "intellectual" property supposedly trumps physical property.

 

[Ichinisan]

http://www.yumsugar.com/One-London-Restaurant-Bill-up-You-2801804
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5377559/ns/us_news/t/restaurant-depends-kindness-strangers/

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It would work for food, if you could "upload" unlimited identical copies of the food at virtually no cost.

The problem is that any piece of food is a piece of physical property and a scarce resource, its natural scarcity entailing a natural conflict that needs to be solved.

Binary patterns, on the other hand, are frequently claimed to be some supposed "intellectual" property, which is not naturally scarce and hence does not entail any such natural conflict needing to be solved.

It still costs money to create music suitable for human consumption. That's tangential though, as my point is that nothing gets the undermensch fired up like "Free food!"

 

[MrMuppet]

It still costs money to create music suitable for human consumption.

You should've left out the word "money" there, as money is not the only resource.

The same applies to anything really, including growing (or otherwise acquiring) and preparing the ingredients for that first dish (which is then to be replicated).

If you do not want to invest your time, money, or effort into creating the "original", none's forcing you to in a free society. That is your choice.

 

[Balt]

I imagine there might be somewhere in the world where this could work, but near St. Louis is not that place.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Could work in Japan or Korea possibly. Not in America

 

[mmntech]

After working three years in a retail environement, I know for a fact, customers are scum. Especially suburban customers. Unlike small town and inner city folk, they have a strong sense of entitlement and they're colossally cheap. So I can't see this going over particularly well. Maybe as a promotion but certainly not as a business model.

 

[lxskllr]

We used to have this box full of snacks at work that said something like Grandma's honesty system or whatever. take a candy bar and leave the change in the container.
0 candybars left and 0 change. didn't last long at all. these are the kind of ideas that only pot smoking hippies come up with.

That's pretty common at offices, and it should be a way for people without a lot of time to put in a regular job, to make some money. Unfortunately, people are pieces of shit, and they'll take the food, and the money. I was in a very small office, and I think I was the only one who put money in the box. We were always getting notices of shortages, and they finally gave up. The woman stopped bringing the box.

It doesn't have a single thing to do with hippies. It comes from people who weren't raised like animals, and expect the same from others.

 

[bononos]

Interesting. I wonder if this will work for very long. A system that relies on "good people"? If there were more good than bad, more generous than selfish, I think maybe our economy wouldn't be in the shitter to begin with.
What do you think?
.....
[/QUOTE]

It might work in a middleclass or wealthy environment where all the customers can actually pay and in a society with high social cohesion- both of which are under attack after decades of neoliberalism. So you've got it backwards. Attitudes won't simply change and relying on simple generosity is not going to work in an environment where greed is good.

 

[manimal]

How about barter ? what if you could pay in blood or hair?

if you wanted say a bottle of crystal you could donate your mangina for an afternoon..

this is a good direction though

 

[rocadelpunk]

I can't imagine this being sustainable for years. The only way I could imagine it working is by peer pressure. You get a "decent" clientele (good location/middle class) and enough people won't want to look like cheapskates...Somewhat, vaguely similar to Starbucks drive-thru where someone says they'll pay for person behind them and it keeps on going for a while.

 

[Sonikku]

They better put up a "NO Liberals or Bums allowed!" sign.

Then again, they're probably illiterate.

Yeah they're screwed.

 

[Squisher]

Panera has 2 Panera Cares Cafes, the other one is in Dearborn, MI and both have been functioning just fine for years. Understand though that Panera only does this in Cafes they know will be net money losers. I have no idea about the one in St. Louis, but the one in Dearborn is in an area that I would consider upper middle class and know of no great influx of homeless people.

 

[3chordcharlie]

People are ridiculously cheap to begin with, have a massively inflated idea of their own worth, and lack respect and appreciation for the work of others.

My prediction is a steak that costs $10 'on sale' at the grocery store will be evaluated as worth about $9 when prepared and served with a baked potato and vegetables.

 

[Doppel]

A silly gimmick.

 

[TheVrolok]

Terrible, terrible business plan.

 

[sixone]

Isn't that why we need bigger government? Because people don't volunteer to pay "their fair share"?