John Yarusi Makes an Iconic New Jersey Sandwich. Panera Founder Ron Shaich Has a Recipe for Growth
The founder of Panera helps John Yarusi, founder of Johnny’s Pork Roll and Coffee Too, plan the next steps for his small but mighty breakfast-sandwich business.
John Yarusi loved the 15 years he spent working in advertising in New York City, bringing campaigns to life for clients such as JetBlue, Mercedes-Benz, and Prudential. Then the Great Recession hit and things went south. The agency he owned went under, Hurricane Sandy devastated his hometown on the Jersey Shore, and he got divorced. At the age of 45, Yarusi moved into his mother’s house and tried to pick up the pieces.
A lover of all things New Jersey, Yarusi thought back to his childhood, when he would get breakfast sandwiches at the corner store on the way to the beach. They were always made with pork roll, a meat invented in New Jersey in the 1800s but barely known outside of the Garden State. “I had two little kids and I couldn’t find a job,” Yarusi says, adding that he’d always been fond of food trucks. “I thought, Why not a pork roll food truck? I had this love of my state and this funny little meat that the rest of the country didn’t know about.”
In 2014, Yarusi bought a food truck for $5,000, refurbished it, and parked it along the boardwalk in Asbury Park. He named the business Johnny’s Pork Roll and Coffee Too and began making breakfast sandwiches—pork roll, egg, and cheese on a kaiser roll. The truck quickly caught on, and in 2018, Yarusi opened a storefront in nearby Red Bank. Last year, Johnny’s Pork Roll pulled in $750,000 in revenue. Now, Yarusi, 56, is deciding what comes next. “I’m at that vulnerable spot when I’m about to take that next step, and I’m scared to death,” he says.
Ron Shaich knows a thing or two about growing food businesses into major brands. The founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, Shaich, 69, is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the $80 billion fast-casual dining sector. In 2017, he sold Panera to a private equity firm for $7.5 billion, then the largest-ever U.S. restaurant sale. In its last two decades as a public company, Panera generated annualized shareholder returns of 25 percent, making it the best-performing stock in the restaurant industry.
Today, Shaich runs Act III Holdings, an investment firm that backs food and entertainment companies, including the Mediterranean chain Cava, which raised $2.5 billion in an IPO in June. Half a century of entrepreneurship has left Shaich with more than a few business lessons, so in October he published his first book, Know What Matters: Lessons From a Lifetime of Transformations. In the book, which he originally intended to publish more than a decade ago before embarking on a second tour of duty as Panera’s CEO, Shaich offers practical advice on both leadership and life. “The most exciting opportunity for me is to share what has taken so much sweat and pain to learn,” Shaich says.
We brought Yarusi to Shaich’s home
town of Boston for a lunch of pork roll sandwiches and a conversation about expansion, giving up control, and the important distinction between a product and a brand.
SHAICH Johnny, let me ask you a question to start. What keeps you up in the middle of the night?
YARUSI It’s been very hard for me to let go of control. Not that I’m not willing to give it up, but I do worry. Tomorrow, for example, my truck is going to a big event down in Philly. For the past two days, I’ve been worried. Will they have enough eggs? Will they have enough bread? Will they show up on time? Will they crash the truck? Will they be polite? Will I get a negative review? I know I can’t control all that, but I try as best I can.
SHAICH Nobody can do it as well as you.
YARUSI But that’s so narcissistic, isn’t it?
SHAICH No, it’s the truth. You’ve grown up in it. You’ve formed it. I mean, how could anybody do it as well as you? You’re Johnny Pork Roll! But if you want to expand and grow, you’re going to have to give up some of that control.
YARUSI There’s a quote in your book about being flexible.
SHAICH Be rigid in vision, flexible in execution. So the first question is, what are you trying to accomplish?
YARUSI I think about it almost from a legacy standpoint. I really want to see this business take off, and not just for my own success. New Jersey has this weird little outlier relationship to the rest of the country, and the one unique thing we have from a food standpoint today is the pork roll. The Italian sub was invented in New Jersey, and at one point it was a regional sandwich known only to Italians in Jersey. Now there are sub brands everywhere: Jersey Mike’s, Subway, Blimpie, Jimmy John’s. That’s what I want for Johnny’s Pork Roll. I want to be responsible for helping bring this unique food product to the rest of the country. I want to be known as the greatest breakfast sandwich in America.
SHAICH OK, it’s great to dream, but dreams don’t make reality. If you get in a car and you press the accelerator and you don’t have your hands on the steering wheel, you’ll eventually crash. So let’s be very clear about what we’re trying to accomplish. Are we going for being the premium product? Are we going to try to get scale with large numbers of trucks or stores? Then, whatever we choose, we have to put things in place one by one using key initiatives that will create a successful business five years from now. What is the first thing we’re gonna focus on? What comes second? What comes third? It’s a road map for you to get to where you’re trying to go. Dreams are going to fuel what you can be, but they’re not going to actually get you anywhere. A plan will do that.
YARUSI I’m at this spot where I see all these things in my head laid out in front of me. I need to figure out how to connect all the pieces: my story, my passion, my beautiful little sandwich that I made. Let me ask you. I have a product and a brand, both of which I care about very much. Which is more important?
SHAICH The product. The brand is simply the amplification of what you’re doing with the product. It’s a way people can use shorthand to talk about the product. Ultimately, what matters is that you have a product that gets people excited. Now, your product is not simply your pork roll sandwich. Your product is your food truck and your restaurant—the totality of the experience. It includes where you’re located. It includes the people who work there. It includes how much time or energy it takes to get the product. We’re not just selling a sandwich.
YARUSI That’s a good point.
SHAICH You’re profitable, which means you have a product that’s viable. It seems to break through with customers. That’s a good start. Now let’s figure out why that first store works—and we’d better do that before we open a second one. Why are customers reacting the way they do? Why do we have something here? Because, Johnny, the time to worry about a heart attack is not in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The time to worry about it is when you’re 30, 40, or 50 and you can still exercise and eat right. It’s the same thing with a business. I’m paranoid for you, and you should be more paranoid than I am. Ninety percent of restaurants fail. So we’ve gotta figure out how Johnny’s Pork Roll is not going to fail, but succeed despite those long odds. We’re going to be disciplined. I’m not automatically thinking you should open another restaurant and another restaurant and try to
Dreams are going to fuel what you can be, but they’re not going to actually get you anywhere. A plan will do that.” RON SHAICH
be Jersey Mike’s. I don’t want you spending your hard-earned money on anything unless you’re highly positive it’s gonna work.
YARUSI That makes sense.
SHAICH Let’s look at the numbers. Your store made $500,000 last year and your truck made $250,000. But you’re making more money on a per-hour basis in the truck than in the store. It generates a higher return on investment. How about we do Johnny’s Pork Roll at the state fair and at a bunch of different festivals and events? And how about we license it in ways in which other people can use it?
YARUSI Yeah. I love it.
SHAICH Because you can’t do everything. If you try to do everything, you’re not gonna get much of it done. To me, the thing to leverage is your energy. People come to the truck and they have an experience. So I worry deeply about separating these stores from you. I’d rather find more opportunities to bring you to bear in different locations and place you where you can be part of the experience. I think you’ll do better and have more fun.
YARUSI I don’t advertise, and I do get a lot of inbound interest from people asking me to come to a soccer field or a lacrosse tournament. I do a lot of weddings. I’ve even done bar mitzvahs.
SHAICH That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s what it comes down to: Figure out what it is that you want to be doing and focus on it. Before you make a plan, you’ve got to tell yourself what success is to you. In my book, I start by talking about my parents. They each had the opportunity to look back at their life at the end. There’s this judgment day that occurs—I can’t tell you where it happens, but I can tell you that you will have it. And the question I would challenge you with is, what are you going to respect about yourself on your judgment day? What are you going to feel good about? Because that’s what I wish for you to create: something you can be proud of. Is it the number of people who tell you how wonderful you are? No. Is it the substance of your business? And before you can pursue that thing, you need to figure out exactly what it is.
YARUSI That’s a beautiful thought.
SHAICH Out of everything we’ve talked about, that’s the best piece of advice I can give.