Panera patrons will soon be able to pay for their soup in a bread bowl with their palm.
The fast-casual restaurant chain is rolling out loyalty identification and contactless payment via Amazon One for MyPanera rewards customers. Launching first at two St. Louis Panera locations (Town and Country and Bridgeton), Amazon One with loyalty linking will be available at additional shops "in the coming months."
Amazon introduced palm-recognition technology in 2020, allowing customers to check out in stores, wrack up loyalty points, enter venues, and badge into work with no added accessories. Just insert a credit card, hover your hand over the device, then follow on-screen prompts to link that card with your biometric stamp (with the option to enroll one palm or both).
Anyone with a cell phone number and credit card can sign up; you don't even need an Amazon account (though subscribers have the added bonus of managing information and seeing usage history online). Registered users simply hold their unclenched hand above an Amazon One machine for a second, and go about their day.
Amazon One newbies can pre-enroll online, or sign up next time they place an in-person Panera order. Those already linked—through Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, or other locations—may link their MyPanera and Amazon One ID online or in store.
The MyPanera and Amazon One integration addresses what Dilip Kumar, VP of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Applications, called "a major pain point" for restaurants and retailers: Customers will sometimes skip loyalty programs due to drawn-out sign-up and redemption processes. Similarly, redeeming rewards often requires rifling through email vouchers or remembering to bring physical coupons.
"Now, Panera guests have the option of hovering their palm over an Amazon One device to load their MyPanera account alongside personalized rewards that Panera provides based on their preferences," Kumar wrote in a blog announcement.
The security-conscious may want to skip the biometrics for discounts on cookies and bagels, though Amazon says images are never stored on individual Amazon One devices. Instead, data is encrypted and sent to a "highly secure" area in the cloud, it says.