Just Jack Posted November 11, 2009 Posted November 11, 2009 It is an interesting article about the fast food industry.... The Accidental Hero by Matthew Boyle Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Subway's $5 footlong, the brainchild of an obscure Miami franchisee, is the fast-food success story of the recession Stuart Frankel isn't what you'd call a power player in the world of franchising. Five years ago he owned two small Subway sandwich shops at either end of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. After noticing that sales sagged on weekends, he came up with an idea: He would offer every footlong sandwich (the chain also sells 6-inch versions) on Saturday and Sunday for $5, about a buck less than the usual price. "I like round numbers," says Frankel, a brusque New Yorker who moved to Miami in 1972 and owned a drugstore before opening his first Subway outlet in 1988. Customers liked his round number, too. Instead of dealing with idle employees and weak sales, Frankel suddenly had lines out the door. Sales rose by double digits. Nobody, least of all Frankel, knew it at the time, but he had stumbled on a concept that has unexpectedly morphed from a short-term gimmick into a national phenomenon that has turbocharged Subway's performance. "There are only a few times when a chain has been able to scramble up the whole industry, and this is one of them," says Jeffrey T. Davis, president of restaurant consultancy Sandelman & Associates. "It's huge." --rest of the article at the link above--
HopsGuy Posted November 11, 2009 Posted November 11, 2009 A friend of mine was a stock broker who had Fred DeLuca as a client. He would tell my friend that it's more important to act successful than to be successful, at least at first. The best decision DeLuca and his partner Peter Buck made was to expand even when the first few stores weren't doing all that great. He said that when people would see a second or third store they'd figure "Hey, I keep see these stores. They must be pretty good." Like Bruce Dickinson said, " of the walk, baby!"
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