"We transformed the company in very fundamental ways 4 times."

1. Evolve ABP from simple French bakery to a chain of bakery cafes. Re-invented into sandwiches
2. New paradigm: fast casual. ABP was becoming pedestrianized. Took form as we created Panera bread.
3. Decision to bet everything on Panera brand, told ourselves we couldn’t do everything. And we sold off everything else including ABP.
4. Reinvented Panera completely. When we had more than $2,000 stores, and feeding more than 1 in 30 Americans every week. Hard truth was we were losing competitive advantage. Changed how we make and deliver food. And taking it further to meet market’s desire for crave able wellness. 

The key insight that sparked Panera:

"Customers were beginning to reject mass market. Coke/Pepsi for Snapple Iced Tea, grocery store coffee for speciality coffee beans, Budweiser for craft beer. A desire for something for special, artisanal, and unique and products made the old fashioned way. It was happening in beer and beverages and coffee and we realized it was about to happen for food. People wanted to feel better about their quick dining experiences. We wanted to make people feel special again."

What Panera is about:

• Built on artisan bread: "Bread is our passion, soul, & expertise”. We built fresh dough instead of using frozen, and we spent $75,000 per store for the best bread ovens. Others just couldn’t copy it at all or easily."
• "We began to sketch out a cafe that would be built on relationships. That filled a bit of your soul as well as your stomach. A cafe that was an oasis from the rush of everyday life...'Warmth' is what I felt when I walked into the store."
• "There is a need in our culture for a third space. We had 100 or more seats in our cafes so could offer a true gathering space infused with positive and welcoming energy. For veterans of the food industry, where tables/seating were intentionally designed to be slightly uncomfortable to encourage turnover, inviting customers to linger was heresy. But we had plenty of excess capacity outside of meal time and we saw opportunity to build sales during these hours, becoming a venue to meet, linger, read, study, wait, conduct interviews, gossip with friends, write the great American novel, our just catch a breath."

And a few more quotes that struck me from the book:

• "It’s a cliche to ask “what business are you really in?”. But I’m amazed by how many restaurants owners and operators think they’re in the food business. They’re not. They’re in the experience business. And food is only part of that equation."
• “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s telling myself the truth."
• The flip side: “For every great quarter, there are dozens of family dinners missed. For every breakthrough innovation, there’s a personal tragedy that you just swallow while you keep showing up to work every day. For every happy customer, there’s a disappointed spouse at home…You will need endurance and there will be many dark nights of the soul."
• "At the height of Panera’s success, we had thousands if bakery cafes. But what we really had was one bakery cafe done correctly, replicated thousands of times."
• "When others are thinking just about today, I’m thinking 3-5 years in the future. The time to worry about a heart attack is not when you’re in the ambulance in the way to the hospital...We transformed the company in very fundamental ways 4 times. Companies’ systems, processes, and people are often perfectly set up to deliver what mattered yesterday. To survive and thrive in our fast changing world, you must keep transforming, never sitting back in what worked yesterday but always successfully reaching for what will matter tomorrow."