Ron Shaich

And so in 2008, 2009, I stepped down as CEO.

I tried to take that opportunity as jumping off a high dive board to actually learn what it felt to go in the water.

And I spent about a year, a year and a half creating Panera Cares, doing a bunch of political things.

I was one of the eight or nine people that co-founded a group called No Labels here in the United States, which is...

meant to reduce the hyper-partisanship in D.C., the polarization and focus us on long-term thinking.

Again, it's about seeing opportunity.

I had the chance to return from the West Coast.

I was still the executive chairman of Panera and the largest shareholder.

And I did a lot of the M&A work and some of the consumer work.

And I came back from a trip after a weekend and I essentially decided I wanted to write a manifesto for how I would compete with Panera if I weren't part of Panera.

I would say how I would screw with Panera.

But how would you take it on?

How would you best it?

And I essentially at that time called for complete digital access, which didn't exist in the restaurant industry.

We can talk more about that.

I called for something called loyalty, which again didn't exist.

It's become prevalent in the industry.

It had actually been developed in the UK with a company called Tesco and came through Kroger in the United States where your best customers were treated differently.

I called for clean food, a different approach to eating and how you might eat.

And I essentially called for Omnichannel.