Ron Shaich

We're not going to give it the human resources to get it where it needs to go.

And my friend looked at me and said, Ron, what would you do if the name of the company was Panera?

Panera owned everything else.

How would that change the way you thought?

And I looked at my friend and I said, wow, I never thought of it that way.

If I had any guts, if it was really Panera, I would monetize every other asset, take the financial capital, and I'd also take the human capital, the best people, and I'd go down there and I'd make this happen.

Because the greatest gem in this company was that division and the greatest risk to its possibility, its potential.

was that we didn't give it what it needed to actually grow and become what it could be.

And I thought about it.

I'm this kind of guy.

If I say I'm going to do it, I often go do it.

I want to live with myself.

And I went off and came back two months later and went to my board with a proposal to sell every other business and bet the whole thing on this Panera Bread division.

You know, I didn't control the company at that point, and that was definitely a very tough situation.

But ultimately, they gave me the room to do it.

I did it.

It led to the worst year and a half of my life.

I sold every other division.

These aren't just businesses.

These were, you know, Old Bone Pen was my first child.