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I agree with the take even though it’s depressing. I just wonder sometimes if a business that does the right thing (focus on the customer, pay a fair wage, good quality, etc) can even survive anymore.
I’d say I have a burger joint that is bees knees near me that I go for the vegan options, but I think those people barely pay above minimum wage….
Walmart proved that they can’t 20-30 years ago by providing a level of cheap in every sense of the world that no new business with honest intent could ever match, killing small town main streets.
And in an economy full of desperate people, cheap > quality or community.
This economy’s incentive structure waved bye bye to the honest provision of goods and services between regular citizen owned businesses half a century ago.
I agree it’s depressing, It’s just what I observe.
What I think is even sadder is that even if a local small business makes a good, honest product and values consumers and employees and even if it miraculously doesn’t get decimated by cheap>quality and becomes successful. It will still get destroyed because private equity or another large soulless corporation will swoop in and make an offer the owner can’t refuse which then starts the the good business down the road of being sucked dry by the corporate vampires.
I do my best to go out of my way to patronize small businesses first, but too many times I’ve seen this happen. Every time it’s so depressing. What’s more depressing is that it really doesn’t need to be this way, and yet we continue as is.
The article didn’t mention that their prices have really ballooned. My family of four can’t get out of there for less than $50 anymore. At that price we might as well go to a restaurant with wait staff and fresher foods.
And that their food quality has opposite-of-ballooned. Deballooned.
Deflated (in quality, not price)
That’s true for a lot of fast food these days. A family of four can easily pay $40-$50 at Wendy’s.
The article doesn’t even go into the regulatory capture where they were almost written out of the California minimum wage requirement.
Yeah, someone else said that had something to do with ending the fresh-baked bread thing. Do you have the details?
Thanks!
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They rocked 25 years ago. Haven’t had what I would call a good meal from them in a decade.
Thanks!
I never got to try it out when it was supposed to be great. My only experience was a few weeks ago, and the quality was subpar.
10ish years ago it was pretty good. Somewhere around 2015 I noticed the size and quality of some items take a massive dive.
Want some hard bread and lunchmeat with a slice of tomato and wilted Lettuce?
That’ll be $14 please.
Their bagels used to be ok but I haven’t tried them in awhile.
The broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl the article mentioned was terrific in the winter.
Unfortunatelly I cannot compare the quality with what it was in good olden days, but Panera is my family go to place whenever we are on the road. It’s the only place I know in US where you can quickly get a decent salad or soup with predictable quality, and not a bad one. And being a large network I can find it practically anywhere.
Soups and salads in other common eateries, like diners etc are usually awful.
It’s more about how it started as a sort of anti-McDonalds and it’s becoming more and more soulless corporate. No more couches and armchairs, no more bread baked fresh in the restaurant…
Oh, did they stop baking bread fresh in the restaurant in order to circumvent the California minimum wage increase that was going to exclude them?
The article says they now ship frozen bread which is baked locally.
This is in contrast to what used to be mixed on site. Like an actual bakery.
Now it’s a fresh as subway, which also distributes frozen dough that is baked on site.
Subway also used to mix and bake on site…
I worked at Subway in 1993, frozen tubes of bread dough we would pop in the oven. although I do remember my manager one day making a giant braided bread out of fresh dough.
It’s about saving money, but they didn’t say what prompted it other than corporate mergers.
Wait, fresh baked bread is what made them exempt from California minimum wage laws.
How?
I stand corrected. Looks like they cleared up the exemption for businesses that bake bread for sale on premises.
https://abc7news.com/panera-bread-california-minimum-wage-newsom/14496645/
Good to hear.