Here's your Forbes daily briefing for Thursday, June 12th.

Today on Forbes, Panera and Kava made him a billionaire.

Here's what he's cooking up now.

Ron Shake looks relaxed.

It's partly due to his surroundings.

The billionaire restaurateur is reclining in the home office of his vacation pad in Jumbi Bay,

a private island off the coast of Antigua.

The 71-year-old shake is also in his element because he's discussing his favorite subject,

the winner takes all world of American dining.

He declares, quote, the restaurant business is dirt farming.

He says that it's mostly muck,

but every now and again, you can strike gold if you can dig up something special. He says,

quote, what I love is when I figure it out before anybody else. For more than four decades,

Sheikh has notched a string of huge wins doing just that.

In 1981, he bought a majority stake in a small, three-location bakery cafe chain named Oban Pan.

Twelve years later, he merged it with a slightly larger 20-store chain called St. Louis Breadco,

now known as Panera Bread.

Sheikh ran Panera as CEO until 2017, when he oversaw its $7.5 billion sale to German

conglomerate JAB Holdings, pocketing $300 million after taxes from the transaction.

Then he set up Miami-based Act 3 Holdings, named to represent the third act in his career,

and invested around $175 million into the fast-casual Mediterranean chain, Kava.

The gamble on Kava is Sheikh's most lucrative to date.

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