Ken Rosenthal, who opened a bakery café in the St. Louis area, with sourdough bread as his star, and built it in a small chain that Panera Bread would become, died on February 14 in his house in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81.
His wife, Linda Rosenthal, said that the cause was Alzheimer's disease.
Mr. Rosenthal was not interested in running a shopping bakery in the mid -1980s, when he and his wife owned a women's clothing store called Kenlyn's in Chesterfield, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.
“I was a person who never went into a kitchen, let alone understood how he could bake something,” he told St. Louis after Dispatch in 1997.
But his brother, Don, told him about a company that he should consider in: a sourdough bakery café such as Le Boulanger, which he had visited in San Francisco. After moving for months, Mr. Rosenthal also visited the bakery.
Impressed by what he saw, he asked the owner, Roger Brunello, to teach him the secrets of sourdough. In the following year he trained with Mr Brunello and in October 1987 he opened the first Saint Louis Bread Company Outlet in Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis, with a menu with 10 types of bread (including sourdough in various forms), a variety To croissants, deeners and muffins and some sandwiches.
“Roger helped him open the store and I said,” Roger, are you sure he knows how to bake? “Mrs. Rosenthal, who is known as Laya, remembered with a smile in an interview.
She and her husband partially took the leap because the competition of larger clothing stores made their work more difficult.
“We had nothing to lose,” she said. “We gambled everything.” They sold Kenlyn's shortly after opening the Saint Louis Bread Company, which became known locally as “Bread Co.”
Interviewed by a local television station six months after the opening, Mr. Rosenthal noted that the new company obliged him to wake up daily at 2 hours
“You have to change your life, you have to change the things you do; I know people don't call me after a certain hour, “he said. “You have to take naps from time to time. But I enjoyed it. “
He added: “For example, making sourdough bread is a slow, annoying process and it is difficult for a large commercial bakery to create that kind of product.”
Kenneth Jay Rosenthal was born on April 11, 1943 in St. Louis, from Herman Rosenthal, who owned a women's clothing store, and Adis (Eckert) Rosenthal, a pattern maker. He graduated from the University High School in St. Louis, went to Community College and followed his father's path in 1963 by becoming the seller of women's clothing.
He married Linda Kramer in 1969.
He bought Karstev's, a women's clothing store in St. Charles, Mo., in 1970, and later brought in a partner, with whom he opened a second Karstev's in 1975 in Chesterfield. In 1980 he and the partner split; His partner took the St. Charles store and Mr. Rosenthal and his wife took the second and changed the name to Kenlyn's.
Mr. Rosenthal's detour from ladies' dresses to fried goods Turned out to be a smart one. From 1987 to 1993, he and his three partners (who joined him at different times) expanded the first café to a chain of 20 stores in Missouri and Atlanta.
After the death of Mr Rosenthal, one of his partners, Doron Berger, told the Denver Post: “What we did in St. Louis at the time, there was no competition. That was part of the genius of Ken, because everyone tried to talk him out before he opened the first location, but nevertheless he chased it. “
In November 1993, the public ownership Au Bon Pain acquired the Saint Louis Bread Company for $ 24 million. At the time, in the 10 months before the sale, Au Bon Pain had 172 bakery cafés nationwide and the Saint Louis Bread Company had $ 14.6 million in income.
“It was the right time to sell,” Mr. Rosenthal told the Post-Dispatch. “We had brought the company to an organization of 20 stores, we needed external financing and we wanted to be able to turn the concept into a larger entity.”
In 1995, under ownership of Au Bon Pain, there were 59 Saint Louis Bread Company Bakery Cafes; In 1997, when Au Bon Pain changed the name of the company (except in the St. Louis market) in Panera Bread, the franchise deals for more than 200 points of sale had.
In 1998, Au Bon Pain agreed to sell in his namesake restaurants and change his company name to Panera Bread.
In 2017, Panera was sold to Jab Holding, a private European Company, for $ 7.5 billion, more than 300 times what Mr. Rosenthal and his partners were paid. Later that year Jab au Bon Pain and reunited with Panera.
Panera currently has 2,230 restaurants in the United States, making it the second largest chain in the Fast-Casual restaurant category (after Chipotle Mexican Grill), according to Restaurant Business Magazine.
Mr. Rosenthal stayed with Au Bon Pain for a while and then became a Panera franchisee in 1997. His company, Bread of the World, owned nearly 100 Panera restaurants in Ohio and Colorado, where he moved in 2002. He lived full time. Since 2019 in Scottsdale, one year after the sale of the last of the bread of the world restaurants a year earlier.
“To have sold the company and to come back as a franchisee he thought it was great,” said Craig Flom, his son-in-law and a long-term bread from the World Executive.
In addition to his wife and his brother, Mr. Rosenthal is survived by two daughters, Carlye Flom and Kari Rosenthal; Two sons, Eric and Scott; and 13 grandchildren.
Mr. Rosenthal explained his operational style when he spoke to the post-dispatch in 1997.
“I have always been the best when I am completely challenged,” he said. “If it gets with me, I think I am losing a little interest.
“I'm not a great operator. I am a better pioneer than I am something else. “
