His Worst Five Years Were His Life's Best Gift

What is it like to build a hit business and then lose all control? Oded Brenner, the founder of Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bald Man has a lot to say about that.

- By Frances Dodds

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?