Panera had a problem. At lunchtime, customers were mobbing the counters to order and pick up, and it was a mess. It was frustrating for everyone involved, and management knew they were probably missing out on sales because of it.
The company's founder turned to Blaine Hurst to lead the search for a solution. As the company's chief technology officer, he put together a team to make Panera a leader in digital ordering and fast pickup. First through a website and in-store kiosks and now through mobile ordering and delivery, those tech efforts have paid off. The company now books more than $1 billion worth of digital orders a year, and digital is more than a quarter of total sales.
To talk about how he got there, I sat down with Hurst for this week's Fortt Knox 1-on-1. The answer isn't what I expected. There was no getting buy-in from across the company about what the problem was before the team crafted a solution. And now that he's the CEO and not the CTO, he's had to shift his methods somewhat.
Plus:
Richard Freed is a child and adolescent psychologist, and the author of Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age; he joined me from San Francisco. Anya Kamenetz is lead education blogger for NPR, and author of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life; she joined me in New York. And Katherine Omerod is a social media influencer and author of Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life; she joined me from London. In our conversation I got feedback and a few pointers on how other parents can set boundaries. Be a friend and share this episode with a parent you know.
147 - New Life for Fortt Knox on LinkedIn and YouTube. See You There!
146 - AWS CEO Andy Jassy on JEDI, the Cloud's Future and More
145 - Trump and Apple’s CEO Talk Business in Texas
144 - A Fresh Look at Design: Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva
143 - Microsoft JEDI: The Empire Strikes Back; with Morgan Brennan
142 - Mr. Zuckerberg Goes to Washington: with John Stanton and Farhad Manjoo
141 - Tech's Free Speech Challenge
140 - Savings and Startups: Credit Carma CEO Ken Lin; Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman
139 - Microsoft's Dual-Screen Surface: Winner? With Patrick Moorhead
138 - When to Fire a Founder, with Walter Isaacson and Steven Levy
137 - Employees or Contractors? Gig Economy’s Labor Crisis
136 - Apple's iPhone 11 and More: Boom or Bust?
135 - Can Tech Save the NFL? Plus, Rapper Jim Jones on His New Pot Venture
134 - Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt; Plus, Marvel’s Spider-Man Divorce and Streaming Wars
133 - Goodbye IPO, Hello Direct Listing?
132 - The WeWork IPO: Why the Controversy?
131 - Apple Card: How the Cash and Features Stack Up
130 - Monopoly: Are Apple, Google, Facebook & Amazon Fair Game?
129 - Facebook’s $5 billion speeding ticket, with NYT's Farhad Manjoo
128 - Putting a Dollar Value on Personal Data, with CNBC's Josh Lipton
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