After 39 years of business, I’m still learning. I go through this every year -identifying new strategies that are extremely important. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
There may be a perception that, with franchises, they’re all the same, so that limits the ability to experiment. But that’s not true. We’ve always kept two slots open on the menu of each Subway franchise – slots that franchisees can use to come up with their own sandwich ideas. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
Profit or perish… There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
When you’re invested in your own business, you’re going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they’re going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that’s harder to get if headquarters is running things. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
Most of the people we sign on as development agents commit to goals they don’t believe are possible. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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.’ – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
Every time I come across learning items of interest, I’ll send distribution voice mail to the appropriate group in the organization. – Fred DeLuca
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. – Fred DeLuca
To a large extent, we’re working hard to fulfill the consumer demand for Subway sandwiches. – Fred DeLuca
Back when we started, people didn’t even know what a submarine sandwich was. The product was only sold in a few markets. – Fred DeLuca