Panera Bread/Au Bon Pain: Ron Shaich (2018)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 1980s, Ron Shaich bought a small, struggling Boston bakery chain called Au Bon Pain, and built it out to 250 locations nationwide. Ron then saw an opportunity to build something even bigger: Panera Bread. It was the start of "fast casual" – a new kind of eating experience, between fast food and restaurant dining. Today, Panera Bread has over 2,000 stores, and $5 billion in annual sales. PLUS, for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Lisa Dalton, who turned a relationship mishap into a game-changing braille label that solves a daily problem for blind consumers. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
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0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, really quick before we start the show, you will really want to hear this, because if you are a fan of 90s music,
0:33.0	you may want to fly from wherever you are in the country to attend this upcoming live show.
0:38.0	How I built this is coming to Seattle to Beneroyahal on Thursday, March 26, and we are going to tell the story of Subpop.
0:47.0	I'll be talking with Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, the founders of Subpop, the iconic label behind artists like Nirvana, Soundgarden,
0:55.0	Fleet Foxes, Deathcap, and so many more.
0:59.0	For information or to get your tickets, go to nprpossents.org, and I hope to see you in Seattle.
1:05.0	It's going to be so exciting.
1:07.0	Okay, on to today's episode.
1:10.0	You can learn a lot about your business, but hanging out with the cash register and just listening to your customers,
1:16.0	which is actually what Ron Shake did many, many years ago at this small bakery he was running in Boston.
1:22.0	Basically, his customers would ask for one thing over and over and over.
1:27.0	In fact, they asked for this thing so often that Ron decided to totally expand what he was offering at the store.
1:34.0	And that decision, well, it eventually led him to build one of the most popular fast-casual brands in the US.
1:41.0	We first ran this incredible story about two years ago.
1:45.0	If you haven't heard it, you will love it. If you have, it is totally worth hearing again.
1:49.0	Here you go.
	...

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