ENTREPRENEUR, CHOCOLATE REVOLUTIONARY, BRANDING STORY TELLER
My name is Oded Brenner, But most people call me “Max” because I’m the visionary and founder of Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man which is the world’s largest chocolate restaurants’ chain. I’ve been creating confectionary wonders and chocolate revolutions as well as inventing and developing unique brands and breakthrough culinary concepts for the past two decades since initiating my first business in Israel in the mid-1990s.
My entrepreneurial journey debuts at 22 when I followed my passion and learned the classic foundations of culinary arts. I apprenticed throughout Europe, working alongside renowned pastry and chocolate experts such as George Maushagen in Germany and famous Parisian purveyors of sweets including Fauchon and chocolatier Michelle Chaudun.
In 2006 I realized my chocolate dream and opened my first United States location of Max Brenner, in Manhattan’s Union Square; today it is one of the ten busiest restaurants in Manhattan averaging more than twelve million dollars annually. That success was the engine which led to a global expansion and the brand has over 70 restaurants worldwide including USA, Australia, China, Russia, South Korea & Israel.
My world- class culinary education of pastries, desserts and chocolate combined with a touch for contemporary branding and abilities to identify the up and coming trends lead me to conduct a very unusual concept making process in the food market. Therefore, It happen to be that in the last ten years I’ve consulted and created several innovative brands by directing and advising to every aspect of the company.
I believe that my concept making mechanism is a little different than the “assembly line” process of large branding offices, but rather similar to a “story telling” workshop that leads to an end result of complete sensual experience and connection to our deepest emotions and roots. In a way I think that I’m more of a Branding Chef that concocts for every food brand the mysterious and magical ingredient that is so hard to define in the road for success in order to create the competitive edge in the extremely hectic modern markets that are constantly looking for uniqueness and a strong differentiation factor.