Panera: Where we charge you $4.99 for a .0265¢ slice of flattened bread.
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Apple Card Promotion Offers 6% Cash Back at Panera
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Of course. They always do the higher percentages at places I never go to or use.. lol.
Yep... I was thinking this same thing. But I will say, Panera's prices have gotten so high, I feel like you NEED all these combined discounts just to get their food for the prices you used to pay not that long ago!
That "unlimited sip club" they do, for example? I tried the free 2 month promo with it and honestly? It just got me to go into their restaurant a lot more often. I'd go to get my free coffee and decide to add a bagel, etc. But without, they want about $4.00 for a fountain Pepsi. That's robbery. If you do pay for the "sip club", it's $13 a month, and still won't so much as discount a penny off any of the "better" drinks they offer like the frozen mocha or lemonade.
Kitchen is more of a "work-a-raunt" though (like Steak and Shake used to warn people about, back in the day, in their commercials).
Got to wash my own dishes and utensils there, and nobody makes any of the food for me. But yeah - does save more than 6%.
The fact that fountain drinks have become another subscription service to think about is just a sad world.
Pretty much fast food's shtick. You generally pay relatively high prices for what's essentially glorified frozen food.
At Arby's, they take a bun and fill it with 10 cents of meat, and charge $3 for that.
My biased comment is the fact that people actually buy fountain drinks at all (and alcoholic drinks too, but we could table that for another discussion I suppose). The stuff's 800% profit margin! Some old timer who did the books for a burger joint in the 70s/80s noted that if everybody came in and only purchased soft drinks, they'd be fine. Imagine that... a burger and fries joint doesn't even need to sell burgers & fries, to get by! On related notes, fries are money makers. Coffee shops make bank with their drinks that are priced quite off in ratio to what it actually costs them to make. For those 2 purchases, the ketchup for the fries, and the milk for the coffee, actually costs them more!
Point is, people are buying into these things! They gotta be doing something right if they're still around. [shrug]
Never tried Panera before so I can't say that I don't like the food, but I agree that dining in a mom and pops restaurant is a preferable option. 😌
Pretty much fast food's shtick. You generally pay relatively high prices for what's essentially glorified frozen food.
At Arby's, they take a bun and fill it with 10 cents of meat, and charge $3 for that.
My biased comment is the fact that people actually buy fountain drinks at all (and alcoholic drinks too, but we could table that for another discussion I suppose). The stuff's 800% profit margin! Some old timer who did the books for a burger joint in the 70s/80s noted that if everybody came in and only purchased soft drinks, they'd be fine. Imagine that... a burger and fries joint doesn't even need to sell burgers & fries, to get by! On related notes, fries are money makers. Coffee shops make bank with their drinks that are priced quite off in ratio to what it actually costs them to make. For those 2 purchases, the ketchup for the fries, and the milk for the coffee, actually costs them more!
Point is, people are buying into these things! They gotta be doing something right if they're still around. [shrug]
I think it's like everything... People will pay (to a point) for convenience. It was always known that fast food places made a bunch of profit off the drinks. But when a large soda with free refills was 99 cents or less, you didn't mind. A lot of people prefer the carbonation and taste of a fresh fountain soda to what you get in a can or bottle. And you usually want something to drink with the food you're buying/eating. Used to be, you could often ask for a free cup of water. But places got wise to that making poor business sense -- so now they all want to sell you a bottled water instead, for at least the same price as the soda.
I just think lately, there's been a concerted effort to run the drink prices WAY up as a way to boost profits (perhaps to cover the $15/hr. wages everyone started demanding). I know soda costs more, even in the stores, than it used to. But it hasn't gone up 3x-4x what it cost a few years ago. That's the typical price increase in restaurants lately.
Yeah right? I got mine in July, is this going to randomly stop? Do I have to change my payment… whaaaa
I'm surprised I still have the willpower to skip drinking anything if all they have is charging for bottled water. I'll wait until I get to my water bottle for that.