Ron Shaich

and then we came in and created a whole different environment for the store a place that you wanted to sit a wonderful wonderful designer named terry heckler who actually did our logo and did the original starbucks logo out of out of seattle who's since passed away but but he was instrumental in that

And we created a kind of environment that welcomed you and invited you.

I used to call it visual candy.

Wherever you sat, you saw something.

And we softened the environment.

We made it comfortable.

We made it a place you wanted to be.

And we put that into place in our stores.

Very quickly, our volumes popped from 1,250,000 up to 1,750,000.

And we began to understand that we were actually playing in another business, a gathering place business, offering an opportunity for a place people could go to, to touch base, to see each other, to connect soccer moms, Bible groups, pharma reps, folks doing interviews, people doing their taxes.

And we created these environments.

And again,

This is the manifestation of this understanding that people wanted to feel special in a world in which they didn't.

And Panera became the poster child for that.

And we built that out.

And that led to third learning and transformation.

By 98, 99, I was feeling some real frustration.

I was running a big public company.

We had four divisions at that time, Au Bon Pain, Au Bon Pain Manufacturing, Au Bon Pain International, and this fourth division, St.

Louis Bread Company that we had renamed Panera.