Before Ken Rosenthal opened the bakery-cafe that would become Panera Bread, he was a businessman who didn’t know how to cook eggs.

Kenneth “Ken” Rosenthal, who founded the company that later became Panera Bread, died on Friday, Feb. 14. He was 81.

Ken Rosenthal and his wife Linda opened the first St. Louis Bread Co. store in the Greentree Shopping Center in Kirkwood in 1987.

Kenneth “Ken” Rosenthal, founder of the company that later became known as Panera Bread, has passed away. He was 81. According to an obituary, Rosenthal "died peacefully in his home surrounded by his family" on Friday,