Ken Rosenthal opened a bakery cafe in the St. Louis area, using sour bread as its star and built it into a small chain that would turn into Panera bread, and on February 14 at him Dead at home in Scottsdale, Arizona. 81.
His wife Linda Rosenthal said the cause was Alzheimer's disease.
Mr. Rosenthal was not interested in running a retail bakery in the mid-1980s, when he and his wife owned a women's store called Kenlyn's in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.
He told the St. Louis Post in 1997 that I was a guy who never entered the kitchen, let alone how to bake anything. ”
But his brother Don told him about a business he should consider: Sourdough Bakery Cafe in Le Boulanger, who he visited in San Francisco. After a few months of resistance, Mr. Rosenthal also visited the bakery.
What he saw made a great impression, and he asked 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 St. Louis Bread Company Export at Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis, with 10 types of bread on the menu (including each). Sourdough in various shapes), various croissants, Danes and muffins and some sandwiches.
“Roger helped him open the store and I said, ‘Roger, are you sure he knows how to bake?’” Ms. Rostar recalled with a smile during the interview.
She and her husband jumped in part because competition from large clothing stores made their jobs more difficult.
“We have nothing to lose,” she said. “We gambled everything.” They sold Kenlin's shortly after opening the St. Louis Bread Company, which is known locally as the “bread company.”
Six months after the opening, in an interview with local TV stations, Mr Rosenthal noted that the new business requires him to wake up at 2 a.m. every day
“You have to change your life, you have to change your job; I know people won’t call me in an hour,” he said. “You have to take a nap every once in a while. But I like it.”
He added: “Creating sour bread, for example, is a slow and tedious process, and it’s hard for large commercial bakeries to create this type of product.”
Kenneth Jay Rosenthal was born in St. Louis on April 11, 1943, and he owns Herman Rosenthal and Models of a women's clothing store Manufacturer's Atis (Eckert) Rosenthal. He graduated from St. Louis University High School, attended Community College, and in 1963 he became a father's path and became a women's clothing salesman.
He married Linda Kramer in 1969.
He bought Karstev in St. Charles, Missouri in 1970 and later brought a partner, who opened his second Carl in Chesterfield in 1975 in 1975 Karstev. In 1980, he broke up with his partner. His partner took the St. Charles store, and Mr. Rosenthal and his wife took the second store and changed its name to Kenlin's store.
Mr. Rosenthal's detour from women's clothing to baked goods Proves to be a smart person. From 1987 to 1993, he and his three partners (who joined him at different times) expanded their first cafe to 20 stores in Missouri and Atlanta.
After Mr. Rosenthal's death, one of his companions, Doron Berger, told the Denver Post: “What we were doing in St. Louis at the time, there was no competition. That was part of Ken's genius, Because everyone tried to convince him to do it before he opened his first location, but he still pursued it.”
In November 1993, the publicly owned Allies acquired the St. Louis Bread Company for $24 million. At the time, Au Bon Pain had 172 bakery and cafes nationwide, while Saint Louis Bread Company made $14.6 million in the 10 months before the sale.
Mr Rosenthal told Post-match. “We brought the company to a 20-store organization, we need external financing, and we hope to make the concept a bigger entity.”
In 1995, under the ownership of Au Bon Pain, there were 59 St. Louis Bread Company Bakery Cafes. When Au Bon Pain changed the company’s name (except in the St. Louis market) to Panera Bread in 1997, its franchise transaction sold for over 200.
In 1998, Au Bon Pain agreed to sell its restaurant of the same name and changed its company name to Panera Bread.
In 2017, Panera sold to Jab Holding, a private European company for $7.5 billion, more than 300 times that of Mr. Rosenthal and his partners. Later that year, Jab bought au bon Pain and reunited with Panera.
Panera currently has 2,230 restaurants in the U.S., making it the second largest chain in the fast casual restaurant category (after Chipotle Mexican Grill).
Mr. Rosenthal spent some time at Au Bon Pain and then became a Panera franchise in 1997. His company, World Bread, owns nearly 100 Panera restaurants in Ohio and Colorado, where he moved in 2002. He has lived full-time. Since 2019, it was one year after the last year of selling the World Restaurant a year ago.
“Selling the company and coming back as a franchisee – he loves it,” said Craig Flom, his son-in-law and long-time world executive.
In addition to his wife and his brother, Mr. Rosenthal also survived two daughters, Carlye Flom and Kari Rosenthal. two sons, Eric and Scott; and 13 grandchildren.
Mr. Rosenthal explained his operating style in 1997 when he spoke with Dispatch.
“I’ve always been the best when I’m completely challenged,” he said. “When things go along with me, I think I’ll lose a little interest.
“I'm not a great operator. I'm a better pioneer than anything else.”
