by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Firehouse Subs is proving to be the little sandwich shop that could.
Starting with just one sub shop in Mandarin in 1994, brothers and former firefighters Chris and Robin Sorensen have built up an empire of sandwich shops with more than 170 “stations” opened over the past 10 years.
And they don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
In the January edition of Entrepreneur Magazine, Jacksonville-based Firehouse Subs was ranked 110th on a list of the top 500 franchises in America. By the end of 2005, the brothers plan on opening 100 more restaurants which they predict will make Firehouse Subs one of the top 10 sub restaurants in the country. By the end of 2008, their goal is to have more than 1,000 restaurants opened nationwide.
“We are not driven by numbers but we had to set a goal,” Robin said. “We open them when it is the right location, the right people and the right time. If it’s not, then we don’t do it.”
But the circumstances seem to have been right a lot recently. Firehouse Subs opened 125 of its 173 stores in the past 24 months. Being that the chain has only been open for ten years, that kind of short-term exponential growth might seem risky to some businessmen. But Chris and Robin say they are doing just fine.
“We are prepared to handle that kind of growth,” Robin said. “What we are trying to do, and only a few have done it, is to grow and build our sales at the same time and we are able to do it. Our sales have gone up every year.”
Currently, Robin said the chain is averaging more than $600,000 in sales per store per year. That is about twice the per store sales average that Subway generates, but Robin said he doesn’t want to be the biggest chain.
“Our goal is not to beat Subway,” he said.
While Firehouse Subs and Subway are in the same category of restaurants, Robin and Chris said the quality of their sandwiches is what really sets their business apart.
For example, they say that Firehouse uses whole muscle meats for their sandwiches while many of the other sub chains use processed meat. While using high quality meats and cheeses might make their food more appealing, it also raises the food costs substantially. Robin said Firehouse’s food costs are at least 20 to 30 percent higher than their competitors.
In addition to higher quality food, Robin and Chris believe in a higher quality of everything related to their chain. Besides having a small army of ex-food inspectors and regional representatives on staff whose main purpose is to inspect every restaurant in the system on a weekly basis, Chris and Robin take a trip about once a month to do what they call a “Founder’s Tour” of many of the restaurants.
“In five months, Chris and I can see every store in the system,” Robin said. “Then we start all over again.”
These are serious tours, too. Chris and Robin average more than 2,000 miles and two states each time they go out. They have started to take their tours so seriously they went out and bought a tour bus that used to belong to country music star Garth Brooks.
“It doesn’t have our logo on it right now so when you pull up to the gas station everybody thinks Ozzy Osbourne is going to get out,” Robin said.
Plans are underway to have the bus painted fire engine red and covered with the company’s logo, he said. The new bus will follow the same fire station theme as the rest of the chain.
Besides the name, all of the Firehouse Subs restaurants are blanketed with a fire station look and feel. From fire axes to soot-covered boots and jackets, all of the firefighter props seen in the restaurants are real. Chris said he buys some of the decorations from a fire equipment company but a lot of the gear comes from local fire stations. He gets the used jackets and boots from the stations when the items get worn out.
Every restaurant location is also decorated with a handpainted 6-by-12 foot mural depicting a firefighting scene.
Local artist Joe Puskus has been painting the murals for the Sorensen brothers since their first restaurant was established and all of Puskus’ murals are customized for each individual restaurant. For example, the Firehouse Subs location in downtown has a mural depicting Jacksonville’s great fire of 1901.
Until recently, all of the murals were only painted by Puskus; since the sub chain has started to grow so rapidly, four other artists were hired to help him keep up with the demand. Chris said Puskus usually has three to five murals being painted at the same time now in his studio at the company’s main office.
Even though the Sorensen brothers seem to have found the perfect recipe for a chain of successful sub shops, Firehouse Subs at one point might have been called Firehouse Brewery. Before they came up with the sub shop idea, Chris and Robin really wanted to open a microbrewery restaurant.
“We like beer,” Robin said. “We almost went through training to become brewmasters.”
But after crunching the numbers for their brewery idea, the brothers realized that it would be too expensive to start such a restaurant. Then they came up with an idea for a fire station-themed sandwich shop and the rest is history — delicious history.