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I made the first sandwich before entering college.
The payroll tax is affecting sales. It's causing sales declines.
You start a business, and you really don't have much of a budget.
In the U.S. and Canada, we have one store for every 12,000 people.
Subway is a real point of pride. We have influenced the way people eat.
It's tough for people to get into business, especially a small business.
I don't have much of a bucket list. I don't have a lot of needs and desires.
We have always had many more franchisee candidates than available locations.
If I'm spending time on something, I may as well do good as opposed to average.
I don't think I ever dreamt of going into business. No one in my family was in business.
To a large extent, we're working hard to fulfill the consumer demand for Subway sandwiches.
Profit or perish... There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs.
There are so many ingredients that are approved for use. You can't be an expert on all of them.
Back in the early days of international, everybody wanted to customize the menu for every place.
I went to school because I was supposed to. I did pre-med because my mum thought it was a good idea.
Most of the people we sign on as development agents commit to goals they don't believe are possible.
By and large, we're a bread-eating culture. People like sandwiches. We don't really over-think that one.
I guess that's one of the benefits of being sick. Your wife lets you have a big-screen TV in the living room.
Back when we started, people didn't even know what a submarine sandwich was. The product was only sold in a few markets.
I was able to solve enough big problems along the way that the sheriff didn't come along and put the 'bankruptcy' sign up.
We're very much in the people business in that there are two important groups you have to work with: customers and employees.
If you have company-owned stores, you make 100 percent of the profit from each one, but you have less entrepreneurial spirit.
In a typical situation, it's going to take pretty close to a year to get your location in, get your permits, and then get open.
Every time I come across learning items of interest, I'll send distribution voice mail to the appropriate group in the organization.
After 39 years of business, I'm still learning. I go through this every year -identifying new strategies that are extremely important.
If I were in charge of the government, I would index the minimum wage to inflation, so that way, everybody knows what they can count on.
Even if you set a long-term goal, that doesn't mean it's a straight-line journey. Often, there are problems and obstacles along the way.
Everybody eats three times a day; it's only a question of where they choose to eat. The longer-term trends are people eat out more often.
The franchisees are uniquely in touch at the local level. They see what's going on in their communities in a way we couldn't ever imagine.
From my point of view, my job is just to work hard for our franchisees, so they can maintain the position they're in, and to grow market share.
You could have everything right but be in the wrong place. You think your business is no good, but really, the problem is your place is no good.
If you treat people nicely, and you allow them to fulfill a role that is satisfying for them, they'll accomplish a lot, and they'll enjoy their work.
Because the stores worked, franchisees wanted to build more stores. If your model works, folks who are happy with it will buy out the ones who aren't happy.
I know a lot of people at some point in their business careers decide they'll just cash in and do something else, but for some reason, I've never had that feeling.
If someone wants to eat healthy, they can do that and get the sandwich exactly right. I'm so pleased we're able to influence so many people and their eating habits.
We find that no matter what country we're in, if we hit the right economic notes and appeal to the mass market, we're able to build the business very, very rapidly.
When I started in the business, the minimum wage was $1.25. I've seen an enormous number of wage increases. Basically, it applies evenly to everyone in the business.
You have to be able to communicate the vision to the people in your organization so that they know where and how they should direct themselves on a day-to-day basis.
Higher unemployment generally bodes well for franchising. People are looking for a new opportunity, and people who have jobs are a little less confident they'll always have a job.
In some markets, we don't have a lot of room to expand. We've done studies of store density and essentially found our more dense markets have more than one store per 15,000 people.
I was 17 years old when I built the first store... A very simple, basic store with a basic counter - not very much equipment, all purchased second-hand. And the menu was very simple.
In 1974, we began franchising. We didn't have any big thought process except that, 'OK, franchising will help us get to our goal of 32 stores and help us run stores farther away from home.'
There's huge access to information. If you need to learn something, you can go on the Internet and learn very quickly. You can reach across miles and miles to find companies that can assist you.
The people who come to work deserve to be paid properly, and there's no excuse. I could understand someone making a small error, but sometimes people make systematic errors, and that's not right.
A lot of stuff happens daily when you're running a company like Subway. If you get too happy about some things or too unhappy about others, you get worn out. It's best if you can pace yourself a little bit more.
For a franchise system to work well, you really need people with an entrepreneurial mind-set because, while you have a large, overarching system that everybody has to work with, a lot of local issues have to be handled.
Everybody who goes through the business will make mistakes. The big question is how big will the mistakes be? How fast will they learn from the mistakes, and how quickly will they get the business in the correct direction?
You really have to understand this isn't a business where you sit in the back room and do calculations - you have to be very concerned about employees and customers, because that's really what's going to bring you success.
The United States is a huge market, and once you get rolling, you can replicate that model over and over pretty easily. Your supply lines are taken care of. You don't have technicians to deal with. You've got your customer base.
How you handle the obstacles has a big impact on how you do. If you give up, then you obviously don't get there, but if you're persistent, and you keep thinking of new ways to approach the business, you're more likely to reach your goal.