For chocolate lovers, the name Max Brenner conjures the image of a bald man. But few may know who that bald man is—or how much this brand hurt and taught him. Here’s the short of it: Max Brenner is a restaurant and retail shop with 50-plus locations worldwide that sell delights like a fondue tower or a chocolate pizza. Its tagline is “Chocolate by the bald man,” and its logo is an illustration of…a bald man. Is it Max Brenner? Not quite. The founder is a bald Israeli man named Oded Brenner (Max was his original business partner), who created his first shop in the small town of Ra’anana 25 years ago, and eventually sold it to the Israeli food conglomerate Strauss Group. But when Brenner started a separate café chain with what he says was Strauss’s blessing, the parent company sued him for breach of contract. He went broke fighting the lawsuit and was banned from creating anything chocolate-related or putting his name or face on any brand for five years. (Strauss did not respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.) Here, Brenner opens up about how he came to view that devastating time in exile as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
You built Max Brenner into a hit. Why’d you sold it?
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Bu hikaye Entrepreneur dergisinin Startups Summer 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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5 Ways to Multitask Your Fall - From a corporate office to working from the living room, Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong has five new products designed to make putting in the hours more enjoyable.
From a corporate office to working from the living room, Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong has five new products designed to make putting in the hours more enjoyable.
You Can Hire Like Netflix - The streaming platform built an incredible team with a strategy called
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Speedy Growth Killed My Startup - We seemed to be rocking it-lots of press, major partnerships. Then we learned the harsh consequences of overlooking our customers.
Three months after I launched my company, we were featured in The New York Times. Other national outlets followed. The attention led to partnerships with Shake Shack, Bombas, Urban Outfitters, and hundreds of other major brands.You might think this sounds good. I sure did when it happened. Hockey stick growth is a sign of success, right? But it wasn't. My company, This App Saves Lives, had fallen into one of the most surprising and ultimately fatal traps for entrepreneurs: We grew before truly understanding our product-market fit. That mistake would ultimately result in the demise of our business.
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Small businesses have a hiring problem. According to the July monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 19% of small businesses rank the inability to find quality labor as the single most important issue facing their company, while 38% reported job openings they could not fill. Overall, 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
Three Pivots to $100 Million - How do you find a working business model? Do it like Rowan-a brand that reinvented itself many times before finally piercing the ear-piercing market
If you have a tween girl, you've probably heard of Rowan. It's the cool brand for piercings, where licensed nurses insert hypoallergenic studs into thousands of ears every day. With more than 500 employees, it's on track to have 65 stores and an annual run rate of $100 million in revenue this year.But in 2017, Rowan was just a fledgling startup with a great idea and a bad business model. It survived because founder Louisa Schneider was willing to pivot, and pivot, and pivot again, until its mission, profit, and market all clicked into place.
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HOW TO ASK FAMILY FOR MONEY
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MY MVP EMPLOYEE
One amazing team member can make an outsize impact on your business. We asked some of the shops on our list to share their No. 1 team member-and what makes them so special.
