Multi-unit franchisees growing and thriving with Subway
My father, he started the business and this was a passion that I always wanted to do
When I took over, we kept on growing, and growing, and growing, and we’re up to 20 stores right here in Nashville, Tennessee.
When we first started out, we wanted only one store. It was only going to be a supplement to our other full-time jobs.
But within 5 years, we had grown to 8 stores.
In ’96, I decided I needed a challenge, something different.
And Subway was the place for us to go.
Upon deciding to go ahead and expand to two, three, four, five Subways…
We are able to offer and create jobs in our community.
Our profitability is much greater.
You know, owning multiple stores kind of balances your income level out, as well.
And, I think it’s much, much easier when you have more people underneath your wing.
It’s easier to operate the business. Staffing is easier. It’s a little easier to control your food costs.
I think the other benefit to having multiple store locations truly is that you can have a succession plan for your organization.
You really have the ability to build talent within your teams and plan for the future.
That ability is a strength right now, especially in this labor market and these changing times.
You can plan ahead and be ready to go with a team in place.
They become much simpler as you open the second, third, the equipment part of it, the ordering part, the operations part…
We become a big Subway family with all the employees that we have, and we’ve created jobs for.
As a multi-unit franchisee, it does get easier because of the support.
Bringing in area supervisors, and having a Human Resource manager, having an accountant team…
It’s a lot easier to purchase ten stores when you already have 35 because I have the support staff,
Subway was helped us grow with…
One of the key things is the name brand - the name itself.
So it will be recognizable, so we can open a restaurant and quickly people recognize, “Oh there’s a new Subway in town.”
And then it has helped us again with all the systems that are already in place that help us run the store.
You have to be interactive with your teams, because your teams are everything.
I can’t be at 35 stores at one time, I can’t open 35 stores. I rely on a lot of people to do a lot of work.
So I think being interactive with them, and just supporting them, being supportive to my people means everything to them.
I think that Subway’s leadership has really spent some time focused on third-party delivery, catering, our app development
and making our brand accessible to our customers, and I think that that is something that really tees us up to be successful and reach our guests in a different way,
And the direction that Subway is heading, I am so excited about it.
And even in the 25 years I’ve been doing this, this is probably the most I’ve been in the direction that Subway is going.
My future growth plans with Subway would be to be over 50 restaurants.
I want to be a mega-MUO, and I think right now there’s no stopping - that’s a true possibility.
Future growth plans are - continue to grow with Subway, especially now that we’re seeing the positive momentum that we’ve started to build, we’ve got a long way to go.
I’ve never been more bullish and excited about the direction we’re going.
I just see things going up.
Again, it’s a winning brand. We’ve been doing it this long. We’ve got this many units. We’re not going anywhere. We’re here to stay.
Subway is a brand that we have pride in…
and that we have loved the past 26 years, and you will, too.
It’s been a great ride with Subway all these years, a great evolution.
We’re building a better Subway together with our franchisees.
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