Know What Matters

11

Getting It Done

As our Concept Essence was coming into being, Au Bon Pain continued to explore avenues for growth, though none proved sufficient to slow its decline. St. Louis Bread Company, however, was more promising. We’d begun placing some strategic bets inspired by the observations we were making in the field. We fed what we learned from those bets back into the vision we were creating.

We knew St. Louis Bread Company had the potential to fulfill the desire for specialty food, with its authority rooted in artisan breads. But how were we to create a sustainable economic model that promised a high return on investment? I knew that the only way to generate sufficient sales and a strong ROI is to turbocharge the asset—that is, to use the ...