If you, like me, do not want to give your biometric data to Panera, you might have been born into the wrong timeline.
The soup, salad, and sandwich chain announced today that it is rolling out Amazon One, Amazon's proprietary palm-recognition payment system, as a loyalty identification for MyPanera, a loyalty program, and as a contactless payment method. The company will first launch it in its hometown of St. Louis before expanding it out to additional locations in the coming months, Panera said in a statement(opens in a new tab). With this announcement, it became the first national restaurant company to use Amazon One.
"Collaborating with Amazon Web Services to bring this service into our bakery-cafes is a natural extension of the tech-forward, guest-centric digital thinking that Panera is known for," Niren Chaudhary, the CEO of Panera Bread and Panera Brands, said in a statement. I don't know about you, but when I think about Panera Bread my first thought is definitely "tech-forward, guest-centric digital thinking" and not "bread bowl I will eat too much of and then feel sick afterward because I am bad at listening to my own body's cues."
"Our philosophy has been centered around leveraging best-in-class technology to create a better Panera experience and using that to deepen our relationship with our loyal guests," Chaudhary said. "Introducing Amazon One, as a frictionless, personalized, and convenient service, is another way we’re redefining the loyalty experience."
Of course, there are privacy concerns. When Amazon initially announced plans to implement Amazon One in 2020, privacy advocates "immediately criticized the move, citing past data breaches, a lack of legal accountability for protecting people's biometric data, and a disproportionate negative impact on low income people and people of color," Mashable previously reported.
Despite it all, Amazon One is already in dozens of Whole Foods locations and Amazon Go stores. Here's how it works: Palm scanners are located near the registers, and, after customers link their loyalty program accounts to Amazon One, they can simply hover their palm over a scanner and, boom, you've paid.
