Category Archives: Papillion Interview

Papillion Interview: John Donahue, Director of Retail Operations at Panera Bread

Leave a reply

John Donahue stands inside the new Panera Bread location with signs, “Panera Bread” and “OUR BREAD BOWL IS ALWAYS FULL”

PapillionBusinesses.com is here with…

John Donahue.

What is your role here?

I’m the Director of Retail Operations.

What did you do before, and how did you get into this position?

I’ve been in the restaurant industry ever since I was 13 years old. I have a degree in hotel restaurant management. My father was in the business, and so it’s just something that’s always been in me. I’ve been with Panera now for a little bit over a year, and I’m just really enjoying my time with the company.

There have to be so many interesting things to your job. What are a couple that you’d like to tell us about?

Yeah, so I emphasize a lot with our teams is what I’ve always enjoyed about the restaurant industry is that it’s the same thing every day and it’s different every day. So we can set ourselves up for success by preparing and doing all of the paperwork pieces of it. But as soon as the doors open up, we have no idea what’s going to happen. So for me, that’s always what I’ve really enjoyed, because you have the opportunity to be able to ensure that we can be successful if you do the right steps. And Panera does a great job of providing the tools for our teams to be incredibly successful.

Why did you pick Papillion and the second location right here?

When we were thinking about Papillion, it’s continuing to grow. There’s been a lot about Sarpy County, the continued development of extending the highway systems to ensure that people will be able to get in. For this area in particular, proximity to downtown and I-80 allows for guests to be able to come in from all different sides. We have a second location that has been incredibly successful for us. The partnership with the city has really allowed for us to feel like we’re a part of the community, and so we’re really striving to be able to continue to look at different opportunities within the state of Nebraska. And with this expansion piece here in Papillion, it just offered us a great opportunity to be able to introduce our new small-box buildout for Panera.

How did you learn about the Papillion Tower District?

We have a team of people that are consistently…

So you knew this was just the right place for you to do it.

Yeah, so we have people that continue to look at new areas that are continuing to develop. And so with Papillion, this city is just continuing to grow. And we’re just super excited to be able to be a part of it.

There are so many wonderful things about your food… the different kinds of food, and your commitment to having good food. Could you tell us a little bit about that and maybe a couple of your favorite items?

Yeah, there are so many unique things. I think that because we have a drive-through, I think that a lot of people automatically assume that we’re a fast-food restaurant, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Our breads here inside the café, we bake them here. We bake inside of our oven all of our bagels, so they’re warm. We cook baguettes throughout the course of the day, so our guests get them hot. And every single one of our sandwiches… breakfast, lunch, or dinner…salads, they’re all made fresh to order. So they’re not sitting somewhere, or they’re not on a rack already warmed up. Everything is made fresh. And so if you want to modify something, if there’s an allergen, what’s great about Panera is that we can accommodate that for our guests.

I think the new French Dipper that we have is probably one of my favorite ones. We ran it last year, and because of the popularity, we brought it back to be able to ensure that our guests were able to get it again. I just think that’s such an awesome thing and just really appreciate it.

I think any one of our sweets…like, I’m a sucker for some sweets. I think that’s also just something that’s really awesome that we are able provide to our guests throughout the whole entire day…anything from a brownie to a chocolate croissant to our blueberry muffins, really what you prefer. you have the ability to be able to choose.

On Tuesdays, we have Bagel Pack Tuesdays which offers a baker’s dozen at a discounted price, and it’s just an awesome thing. Then we run programs like our sip club that allows for our guests to be able to come in and refill their beverages throughout the course of the whole entire day. And with this new location here, we have a bean-to-cup machine which actually grinds the coffee beans fresh every single order for you. This is something that the company is looking at being able to potentially get into all of our locations, as the success of this piece of equipment has really shown some great things for our guests that are coming in, just from a quality standpoint and a freshness standpoint.

The bean-to-cup feature here, is it in other Paneras?

Only our small box, so there’s very few of them currently and we’re one. I don’t know the exact number of small boxes that we have, but I know that this was like #4 on the build-out of it. We may have more than that currently that are open, but this piece of machine is something that we hope to be able to get across our whole group of corporate-run stores.

Is it the only one in Nebraska?

It is the only one in Nebraska. So it’s super unique for the city of Papillion to be able to have this bean-to-cup machine. We do serve fresh coffee all day. It’s brewed, but we serve our dark roast and our hazelnut coffee after 3 p.m. and we brew it every hour, so you have a fresh pot of coffee every hour. This one, it’s brewed for you exactly how you like it all day long.

It’s one of the things I like about Panera. When I go get a cup of coffee, it’s always good.

Yeah.

It’s not overheated or anything like that or been around too long.

Yeah, we focus a lot on freshness, right? You’ll see that with our food, but we really emphasize that with our coffee. I think the first thing that our guests really come in for is a fresh cup of coffee. It is something that we focus on a lot as a restaurant group…to really make sure that it’s served hot and fresh all day long. And if a guest would like a cup of decaf after 2:00, we will most certainly brew it for them.

That’s nice. And Panera does a lot of community work and cares about the communities they’re located in. Could you please tell us about some of these activities?

Yeah, so we have donation. At the end of every night, we partner with local charity groups and organizations where we will donate our leftover breads, bagels, and sweets to ensure that we’re not just discarding something that could feed the community. The product that we make inside of here is good for the day, and so we want to make sure that product goes somewhere and is able to feed somebody. So that’s one of the things that I think is unique about our organization. And just also like today with the ribbon cutting here, we had several different city council members that came to join us for that. And I think that emphasizes just what the community represents and what Panera means to the community. We participate in any event that we’re contacted about. We run a lot of fundraisers for local communities where they can either contact us or they can contact our fundraising department… where they can come in and have an event with us. And then part of the proceeds from that evening will be donated to that organization. So local schools, community centers, anybody that would like to be able to participate has the ability to sign up for it at any one of our Panera Bread locations across the country.

So they can choose the location and the time if it happens to be available.

Yeah, and so they can reach out and they can say, “We’d like to be able to have an event from 4 to 8. This is the charity or the school, and we’d like to be able to have a fundraiser. There’s going to be, say, 50 or 100 people.” And then a percentage of the proceeds go towards that organization.

Is there a question or something I haven’t asked you or some event coming up that you would like people to know about?

No. I think Panera is continuing to look at opportunities within the state of Nebraska and being able to grow our presence within the community, to be able to get them our food that we believe is the best that’s out there. And so I just appreciate you coming out and wanting to be a part of this today. We had so much fun this morning. We gave out 100 Free You Pick Twos for a Year to the first 100 guests that came in our building.

I was 105.

We actually had somebody that was outside last night at 12:30 in the morning.

Oh, my goodness.

And so they waited 5 1/2 hours for the doors to open this morning. And so it was awesome to be able to see. We had…I think it was 30 people that were standing outside before we opened, and we got to our first 100 guests within the first two hours this morning. So it was, again, I think every time that you open up a location, you’re always questioning, “Are we going to be busy? Are we going to have guests that are going to show up? Are they going to enjoy what it is that we’ve put a lot of energy and effort into?” And today is just another example of how the community of Papillion really stepped up, and we’re excited about our doors being opened and being able to serve our food out of a second location.

The community is very supportive at so many different levels. We’re very happy that you’re here.

Thank you.

And I’m very happy you’re in this location too.

Thank you.

There was so much speculation about what might go in here. People were crossing their fingers for different things, so we’re very happy to have you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Visit the new location at:

Panera Bread
117 W Cedardale Rd.
Papillion, NE 68133

Learn about the Unlimited Sip Club here:
https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/mypanera/subscription.html

Papillion Interview: John Berry of Berry Law

 

So tell me a little bit about what you did before you got to the military and then how you got here…

I went to New Mexico Military Institute my last year of high school. My father went there and thought it’d be a good opportunity. I thought I was going to go to West Point. I thought I was going to go to the United States Military Academy.

After two years in military school, I decided I did not want to do that, but I wanted to go to school on the East Coast. I had a cousin who was a surface warship officer in the Navy stationed in Norfolk, and he’s like, “You’ve got to see William and Mary. The campus is beautiful.” By then there, too, it was like 63% female. “There’s more women than men,” he said, “but it’s a beautiful campus. You really need to come see this campus.” And I went there, and he said, “Their team is competitive in Division 1 Double A football,” which is FCS.

I went there, fell in love with the campus, and I knew I did not want to go to a military school. And then I played football for a couple years. I was not good. I sat on the bench. But I did have teammates who were Mike Tomlin and Sean McDermott, both NFL coaches now. Tomlin’s with the Steelers; McDermott’s with the Bills.

I got that great experience, and I got injured, and that’s when I stopped playing. And I thought, “I don’t just want to go to law school. I want to do something else.” And I saw this thing on Army Rangers and being starved and sleep deprived, and I thought about how hard I had worked to play football… to get enough sleep, to eat enough food, to try to get big. And I thought, “This would be a real challenge.” I got excited. I did an ROTC summer camp after my junior year. I earned the highest scholarship. I don’t know if it paid everything, but I earned the highest scholarship. And two years later I was an infantry officer and went to Bosnia in ’99. We were bombing Kosovo and I thought, “This is it. This is where it’s all gonna happen.” And it didn’t. It was still a peacekeeping mission. So I got out and went to law school, but I stayed in the Guard because they gave me tuition assistance.

So then I’m having a good time in the Guard, thinking, “Okay, this is a great experience. But being a lawyer and in the Guard, it’s too much. So I am going to get out.” So I told my commander, “Hey, I think I’ve had enough. I think I need to resign my commission. I’ve fulfilled my obligations.” He said, “Not so fast. You’re gonna command your company in Iraq.” So I went to Iraq as a company commander, as a new lawyer, but I was not in a JAG position. So it was kind of a nice break from the practice of law, if you can imagine. My dad’s trying to show me how to run the firm. I’m trying to learn how to be a lawyer. It’s a lot of stress. And so I deployed. And I had a four-month-old daughter at the time. So with the deployment, the train-up, that was about a total of 18 months.

Then I came back, and my dad was trying to wind down the firm. We decided to try to build it back up, and that’s exactly what we did. And then eventually I took over the firm, and I really liked helping veterans.

I think that I probably learned quite a bit from the Nebraska National Guard, learning how to lead remotely. We have lawyers in eight different states right now. Back then when I was a battalion commander, I had a full-time staff and I couldn’t be there. So it really taught me how to make the best use of my time when I’m boots on the ground, but then also how to lead when you can’t be boots on the ground.

So I’m a huge fan of the Guard and Reserve because they taught me a lot about leadership. So many great commanders taught me things … And this is what I’m trying to share with veterans. You already know how to lead. You want to run a business; you know how to do it. If you want to run something in your community, you know how to do it, you already know. And I didn’t believe that initially. It took me a while, and then I started seeing the patterns. I realized, yeah, leadership is leadership. And a lot of the things I was experiencing, it was like, well, yeah, now there’s real people. I have to pay in money involved in the course. There’s not that sliding scale where you get paid no matter what, based on your retirement grade and your rank.

But I learned quite a bit. And when I got to about 40 years old, I had reached the point in my military career where I thought, “I’m gonna retire. I’ve got 20 years in battalion command. This is it, I’m done.” And then I started growing the law firm, and then I started hiring veterans because I missed being around veterans. So that’s my story.

Your growth and trajectory has been really impressive. And 60 years…amazing. Do you have advice for people for sustaining and growing their companies or starting their companies?

Yeah, just embrace the suck. It’s gonna be bad. Like, bad things are gonna happen, and you’re gonna fail again and again and again. But you have to be willing to take the beatings. You can’t be afraid to fail. And you get to decide when it’s over. Right? And it’s not over until you say it’s over. I’ve known people who have gone bankrupt and come back. People go through some horrific things, right? Have been stolen from, have been pushed out by competitors. But they come back. And I think being a veteran, you know, “Hey, you screwed up.” You had to do push-ups. And it’s like, okay, don’t take it personally. Being yelled at, don’t take it personally. It’s the same thing. You just don’t take it personally.

Listen to the market. The market will tell you what it wants. You can’t dictate what the market wants. So listen and don’t take anything personally, and you’ll be fine.

People already asked you this, but I’d like to know because we’re probably putting this on the Papillion website. There are so many different things about Papillion. How did you pick Papillion and this location?

Offutt Air Force Base, veteran community, rapidly growing community. Those are the three things. And the people are nice. I love the mindset, I love the positivity. So many positive attitudes here, and yeah, just a veteran-friendly community, and usually veteran-friendly and business-friendly go hand-in-hand. I’ve noticed that. Right?

We were here a little bit, and we fell in love with the people here. We always joke it wasn’t the weather.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the people here were amazing, so we wanted this to be home.

Absolutely, absolutely.

What type of law do you help people with?

Nationally, we do veterans’ disability appeals. If a veteran has not got the right rating or has been denied or something happens, we help them get the correct rating, all the benefits that they earned. Our goal is to get the veterans all the benefits they earned.

And then when people are injured in a car accident or a truck accident and the insurance companies aren’t paying, then we get involved and we hold the insurance companies accountable.

Other types of law? Those are your two primary.

We have others. But I’ll tell you what I’m sticking to. You asked me about the lessons I’ve learned. Be really good at a couple things and don’t do too much stuff.

Always good advice for people to focus. And then for having this big event, what were your thoughts?

They weren’t my thoughts. They were Bob, my CMO’s, thoughts. I’ve learned to delegate. As a leader, I have a vision of where I want to go, and then I just hire the best people I can and I let them run.

Thank you.

Thank you for all you do.

Berry Law
12 Olson Dr., Suite 105
Papillion, NE 68046
(402) 903-6444

Papillion Interview: Tommy’s Car Wash, Part Two-Papillon Event-Tunnel of Terror 25-26 October

PapillionBusinesses.com Interview with Jeremy Eickman  and Keagan Glazebrook  of Tommy’s Express Car Wash Papillion, Part Two

Tommy’s of Papillion has an event coming up!

Sign for Tunnel of Terror with bats, full moon, scary hand, car wash exterior and shiny clean white car and text, ” Oct. 25-26, 7-10 PM, $25 per vehicle, Free Month Included

Keagan Glazebrook: Our event coming up, Tunnel of Terror. We’re very excited for that.

Jeremy Eickman: It’s our second year of doing this.

Keagan Glazebrook: You can talk about that.

Jeremy Eickman: So the Tunnel of Terror is a really fun event that I’ve done in several different locations before I was able to be a partner in this one. So we do a two-day typical event, but we close our car wash about 6:30. Normally we’re open till 9:00. So we close at 6:30, then we reopen at 7 for a specific event. We do wash your car, but we do offer a lot more than that. We offer a lot of screams and scares that go along with it. We bring in a lot of people who like to volunteer, but obviously we have our employees on as well. We’re all dressed up in, I will say, scary costumes. This is not Lego man walking around. This is Scary Clown and the Grim Reaper, and we’re going to scare you. It’s a true scary event, very similar to like a haunted house type event.

We slap your window a little bit. We touch your car, we’ll jump out at you and scare you, but you get to stay in the safety of your own vehicle, so it’s not like you having to walk around in certain haunted houses.

Keagan Glazebrook: Unless you leave your doors unlocked.

Jeremy Eickman: We do have a sign that says “Leave your doors unlocked. We may open your door.” So yeah. But we’re not going to touch anybody or go, you know, like, “Boo!” But we are going to scare your kids or you. And usually we’re always positioned in areas that are dark, and you might not recognize us and all of a sudden somebody will pop out at you. It’s a frightful 10 minutes, 15 minutes, roughly, depending on how long our line is. It could take even longer to get through the whole event, but you do go through the car wash, so you end up leaving with a very clean car.

Oh, so there’s water in the sprays…

Jeremy Eickman: Everything’s still going on, yes. We do get covered in soap while we’re in there, so we don’t have to take a bath at night when we get home. So we do offer that, but then in addition to that we give everybody a free month. Even if you’re an existing member, you get a free unlimited membership month, which basically means you’re getting a $40 membership for the $25 entry fee. So you’re getting half off if you’re an existing member on your next month, or if you’re not a member, you’re getting a free month just for coming to an event. You can’t go to a haunted house and get any takeaway like that that we’re going to offer here.

So you do that, and then you have get to enjoy the experience but without the Halloween.

Jeremy Eickman: Without the Halloween, yeah, unless you want to come back the next night. But you do have to pay for a second night. We do charge everybody, even if you’re an existing member. But like I mentioned, we do give that member a full 30 days for free the next month as well. So people can take advantage of that even if they’re a member. They do get the scares, and we do give candy away. We do have a candy station at the end of the event so the kids can decompress a little bit and they can get a Reese’s or a Snickers. We give away good candy too. None of that cheap stuff. We’re giving away the good chocolate. So the dentist shouldn’t be happy with us next month.

So, any question you wish I would have asked?

Jeremy Eickman: No, I think we probably went through everything. We’re really excited that you came. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much for doing this. I’ve been looking forward to this interview.

Long exterior view of Tommy’s Car Wash with Halloween decorations

Visit Tommy’s Express Car Wash In Papillion on 25 and 26 October between 7-10 pm for a haunted car wash.

Tommy’s Express Car Wash
1402 S. Washington St.
Papillion, NE 68046
(402) 205-0730