Danny and Mark Patterson on 50 years of cookies and a culture of excellence
Brothers Danny and Mark Patterson built bakeries across the country around the idea that people were the most important component of a company. And after 50 years in business together, they ended up where they had long wanted to be: with one store in Aspen built around Community.
Bryan Welker sat down with the Patterson brothers to talk about Aspen, business, and the philosophy that has kept Paradise Corner going for almost half a century.
Bryan: How did you first get to Aspen?
Danny: I came here in 1965 during college. I had skied eight days here over Christmas, and I just fell in love with the place. I turned 18 the next month, dropped out for that semester, and came here to ski the season.
My dad was an old ski pioneer, and he came and looked at Aspen. My parents bought a place here in 1973 for $24,000. They thought they had overpaid. That got us all here.
Bryan: How did baking enter the picture?
Mark: I was ski racing and working at the Chart House restaurant here in town when Danny had the idea of doing a bakery. He asked if I would come and help finish building the first store, and the plan was that I would stay for two weeks. I never went back. I ended up staying on, becoming a partner and building the business with him. We are celebrating 50 years this September.
Danny: It’s the longest two-week commitment I have ever heard of.
Bryan: What made Aspen feel like the right place?
Danny: The mountains, the small town, the quality of life, the schools, and being able to raise kids without the big-city chaos. People have asked if I ever miss where I came from. I always say, “Not for 10 seconds.”
Mark: Aspen has the best of so many things. For our kids growing up, that fabric was phenomenal.
Bryan: Paradise has become an Aspen institution, but it did not start here. What was the original idea?
Danny: Our first store was in Long Beach in 1976. We wanted an environment of excellence for our employees and our guests. We never thought of the people who worked with us as employees. They were coworkers. The people who came in were not customers. They were guests.
Pretty quickly, it changed from a concept into a culture. We called it a culture of excellence.
Mark: At one point, we had bakeries all over the country and eventually sold them to Panera Bread Company. At the end of all that, we kept the Aspen store. That has been the greatest thing for us.
Bryan: How did the Aspen store happen?
Mark: We were here in 1981 for Danny’s wedding, and we walked by this corner. There was a little “FOR RENT” sign hanging on the doorknob, written in pencil. We called the number, met the guy an hour later, and signed a deal that afternoon.
Danny: We rolled the dice and said, “This is the best location in town.” It still is.
Bryan: You put great emphasis on people in your business. Can you expand on that?
Danny: If you put people first, profits follow.
We have always put people first. That is why we are staffed. We are not cutting people loose in the off-season and then trying to hire again. We have about 60 employees.
Mark: The product matters also; great people are not inspired to keep working for you if they are not serving something great. Danny and I still look at the cookies every day. After 50 years, we still ask whether it is perfect or not.
Bryan: How did that philosophy help you survive downturns?
Danny: Early on, we said, “We are not going to participate in a recession.” That meant we were going to be a happy place to be.
During one major downturn, we were doubling the company. We did not let one manager go because of the recession. We said, “We are going through this together. If we come out the other end, we are coming out together.”
You do not take a few chocolate chips out of a cookie to help the bottom line. The only thing that changed for us is that for a little while, we made less money.
Bryan: What does Paradise Bakery mean to Aspen now?
Danny: We are part of the old fabric left in Aspen. That is part of the reason Mark and I are still here. We believe in giving back to locals, supporting young people, and participating in the community rather than complaining about what has changed.
Bryan: With a line out the door, it would be easy to assume the hard work is done. How do you avoid that?
Mark: When we see a line out the door, we know we have something to fix. How do we move it faster? How do we make people happier while they are in it?
Danny: People say we got lucky. I say you do not get lucky with success. You put yourself in a position that looks lucky to others, but you paid for it.
After 50 years in business together, the Patterson brothers still look at the queue outside Paradise Bakery each morning and ask how it could run better. In a town that has changed as much as Aspen has, that instinct may say as much as anything about why that queue is still there.
Bryan Welker lives and breathes business and marketing in the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond. He is President, Co-founder, and CRO of WDR Aspen, a boutique marketing agency that develops tailored marketing solutions. Who should we interview next? Reach out and let us know bryan@wdraspen.com
