Ron Shaich

I'd do so.

And I'd hand them the baguette machine.

And they'd pull out a little bag from a supermarket.

They'd put some boursin and roast beef on or smoked turkey.

And again, you didn't have to be a marketing whiz to say, wait a second, what they really care about, the job they want is a sandwich.

They want something.

It's not the croissant or bread they want itself.

It's how that forms a platform for something else.

And we began to say maybe the opportunity, the job that the customer wanted to hire us for was actually to make them the sandwich, make them the salad, use the croissant and bread as a platform.

And straight up, again, doesn't seem like a revelation now, but we began to rebuild this concept around that idea.

And very quickly, this broken bankrupt company, Old Bonpens, started taking off.

And when we were selling sandwiches and croissants, it was an elevated food experience.

People loved it.

And this broken down little company in the course of six, eight years took off.

It became a category in malls across North America.

We had everybody from Pepsi and Sara Lee attempt to take us on or buy us out or take us out.

By 1991, the manifestation of that was we went public based on this model of a French bakery cafe as opposed to just a French bakery.

That was one learning, that observation, that empathetic observation of the power of the product, not as an end in and of itself, but as a platform that led to a powerfully successful concept.

The same thing happened again.

By 93, Au Bon Pain was beginning to run out of organic growth.