Panera Bread founder Ken Rosenthal handed away on Friday on the age of 81. He was surrounded by household and leaves behind his spouse, Linda “Laya” Rosenthal, and their 4 youngsters.
In 1987, Rosenthal began Panera Bread’s precursor, the St. Louis Bread Firm. The small bakery used a sourdough starter from San Francisco, which Panera says it nonetheless makes use of in its “iconic sourdough bread.”
Clayco founder Bob Clark, who’s married to Rosenthal’s niece, recalled on his web site the day the Panera founder got here to him with a “crazy idea” to begin a bakery. Throughout a visit to San Francisco, Rosenthal turned infatuated with sourdough bread, the very merchandise that will encourage his enterprise.
“I was more than a little shocked by the immediate positive reaction to the bakery. Lines of people…crowds…enthusiasm…buzz…all of the things you would want to have happen, which led to multiple stores being opened in short order,” Clark recollects.
“I remember Kenny fibbing to me that his plan was to open only four or five stores when it turned out that he had much more ambitious plans. Thank God he did not take any advice from me about anything other than construction.”
In telling Rosenthal’s “phenomenal success story,” Clark remembers the Panera founder as “humble and with a great sense of awe and humor.”
Rosenthal offered the chain within the Nineteen Nineties and have become a franchisee. The enterprise he began was renamed, however its mission remained. The corporate says on its web site that it nonetheless goals to place “a loaf of bread in every arm.”
Panera not solely carries on Rosenthal’s enterprise legacy, however his philanthropic values. The corporate companions with 3,300 charities throughout the US to donate unsold baked items on the finish of the day by its Day-Finish Dough-Nation program, based on Panera’s web site. Moreover, the corporate works to assist “underserved and at-risk children and youth” by The Panera Bread Basis.
