The Hollywood Panera Bread in Northeast Portland will open Sunday as the company's third "pay-as-you-can" nonprofit cafe in the nation, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.



Today is the last day the 4143 Halsey Street restaurant will be run by the for-profit arm of the company. The cafe will close at the end of business this evening and remain closed through Saturday as the staff is retrained and the interior refigured for the new system, said Panera spokeswoman Kate Antonacci.



When the cafe reopens Jan. 16, it will be run by the non-profit Panera Bread Foundation and will be renamed a "Panera Cares Community Cafe." The new restaurant will not feature menu prices or cash registers but "suggested" donation prices and donation bins instead.



"One of the goals of the program is to make sure that everyone who needs a meal gets one," the restaurant said in a release last fall when it announced that one of Portland's six Panera's would be the next nonprofit cafe. "People are encouraged to take what they need and donate their fair share."



The restaurant chain's foundation made a splash last year when it opened the first "pay-as-you-can" cafe in Clayton, Mo., outside St. Louis. A second opened in Dearborn, Mich. Outside economically battered Detroit in November.



According to the foundation, 60 to 70 percent of the customers at the first two cafes pay in full. Another 15 percent pay more, and 15 percent less or nothing.



"Panera has given it as a gift to the community and we hope they'll sustain it," Antonacci said Tuesday.



Why Portland?



"We were looking at the West Coast and Portland in itself is very eclectic," she said. "We were drawn to it because people are very socially conscious there."



And why the Hollywood neighborhood?



"We wanted a place that was mixed," she said. "It needed to be accessible to people who need it and accessible to people who will sustain it."



-- Larry Bingham



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