In the early 1980s, Ron Shaich took over Au Bon Pain, a struggling group of Boston bakeries, and helped grow it into a national chain with 250 locations. But Ron saw an even bigger opportunity in a small bakery chain in St. Louis. So he made a remarkable gamble: he sold Au Bon Pain to focus entirely on what would become Panera Bread. That bet helped transform the way Americans eat—and turned Panera into a multibillion-dollar business.
What You’ll Learn
How customers asking for sliced baguettes helped Ron discover a bigger business in sandwiches
What he saw in a 19-store bakery chain with surprisingly low real estate costs
Why Ron sold Au Bon Pain after building it into a national chain to concentrate on Panera
How Panera used falling real estate and construction costs to expand during the Great Recession
Why Ron believed staying on Wall Street could threaten the long-term bets that made Panera successful
Production Credits
How I Built This is produced by Podcast Pointman and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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