Three Hires, One Mandate
Einstein Bros. Bagels, America's largest retail bagel chain, has simultaneously filled three senior leadership vacancies — Chief Development Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief People Officer — as the Denver-based brand accelerates a plan to open 300 bakeries over the next three years and surpass 1,000 total units by 2030. The triple appointment is among the most significant executive build-outs since Panera Brands consolidated Einstein Bros. under its fast-casual portfolio alongside Panera Bread and Caribou Coffee.
The Executives
Patrick Waldron joins as Chief Development Officer, bringing more than 15 years of real estate and operations experience spanning Amazon, Whole Foods Market, and JLL. In his most recent role, Waldron served as director of business operations for worldwide retail growth and development within Amazon's Worldwide Grocery division, where he helped construct the Amazon Fresh real estate organization and supported the opening of more than 60 Amazon Fresh stores. At Einstein Bros., he will lead site selection, development process modernization, and the broader expansion program toward the 1,000-bakery milestone.
Shawna Fehrman-Lee assumes the Chief People Officer role after nearly a decade at HelloFresh, where she held the position of global vice president of people and oversaw talent strategy across 16 international markets for a workforce exceeding 20,000 employees. Her mandate at Einstein Bros. is to build the human-capital infrastructure required to staff and culture-manage a rapidly expanding organization.
Will Evans takes the CFO seat with a resume that spans public accounting at EY, a CFO posting at specialty coffee brand La Colombe, and most recently the top finance role at Alvarado Restaurant Nation. Earlier in his career, Evans supported Zoës Kitchen through its initial public offering and spent three years at a private equity firm investing in restaurant concepts — experience that positions him to manage the capital discipline a unit-count doubling requires.
Why It Matters
The hirings are calibrated to three distinct pressure points of rapid franchise and corporate expansion: real estate pipeline, workforce scaling, and balance-sheet management. CEO Jessica DePetro characterized the trio as leaders who "understand how to scale complex organizations while keeping people, operational discipline and long-term value at the center of the work."
The strategic context is a U.S. bagel market valued at approximately $5.8 billion, according to Grand View Research — a category where Einstein Bros. holds the largest retail footprint but faces growing competition from both regional independents and grocery-channel private label. Adding 300 net new bakeries in three years implies an average of roughly 100 openings annually, a pace that would nearly exhaust the current 700-unit base in new-unit terms and demands precisely the kind of integrated development-finance-HR coordination these three hires are meant to provide.
For operators and foodservice real estate professionals tracking fast-casual expansion trends, the Waldron appointment in particular signals that Einstein Bros. intends to apply a data-driven, tech-sector real estate playbook — consistent with the Amazon Fresh methodology — to a bakery-café format that has historically grown more organically. Investors and analysts following Panera Brands' portfolio strategy will note that this executive investment suggests the parent company is prioritizing Einstein Bros. as a meaningful growth vehicle within its multi-brand structure.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
