Bahjat Shariff
Operating partner, Howley Bread Group Panera Bread in New England
Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts – 28 cafés
The Pitch: Your café, where your friends and neighbors prepare delicious foods that you can feel good about eating.
Years in business: Opened first café December 2000 on Reservoir Avenue in Cranston.
Employees: 1,350
Cost to obtain franchise: $35,000 franchise fee, $942,000-$1.6 million total investment
Before opening franchise: Shariff and his partner, Tom Howley, worked in the corporate office of Au Bon Pain, which owned Panera Bread at the time. With an understanding of Au Bon Pain and Panera’s operations, they teamed up with Lee Howley to form the Howley Bread Group.
Reason for opening: “At the time in the food industry, there was a gap where people had few choices: fast food, casual or fine dining with table service, or eating at home. Panera was born out of the opportunity to have great food without having to sit at a table for 30-45 minutes.”
“We are local people. We all live and work in these communities – we aren’t an organization based in Chicago trying to manage a business in R.I., and that’s something to be proud of. We treat people as people. Panera has an employee- and company-funded Helping Hand Fund that is designed to help employees in need when a crisis happens, from losing their home or car to a major medical crisis. It’s amazing how much money people will put in for an employee in need.”
“We actually encourage guests to spend the day in our café, and it is not unusual to spot many, many people hanging out in a Panera at any given time. We call it our daily oasis. You’ll see job interviews, people surfing the internet, first dates, friends meeting after dropping kids at school, book and knitting clubs, businesspeople out for lunch – it’s amazing the collective of people Panera brings together.”
“One of our guiding principles is to give back to the community. We are very involved, supporting Children’s Friend with nearly $600,000 in donations, participating in charity walks, etc. We donate all day-end bakery products to food banks, churches and soup kitchens. We have upwards of hundreds of items ... that are donated.”
“For the past two to three years, Panera has been the leader in clean food, with zero preservatives, artificial coloring, flavors or sweeteners. The biggest thing we hear from people all the time is, ‘I trust my order, and I trust what I eat at Panera.’ We serve food as it should be – real food you can be proud to give to your family.”
