Startup Journal looks at one of Subway’s better expansion strategies.
To maintain its rapid growth as strip malls and spots alongside the freeway fill up with fast-food outlets, Subway Restaurants is increasingly moving into locations where rivals have feared — or neglected — to tread. In the past several years, Subway has opened inside a church in upstate New York, a handful of coin-operated laundries in California, a Goodwill Industries store in South Carolina, a car dealership in Germany and an appliance store in Venezuela. It has more than 110 restaurants inside hospitals.
After developing more than 100 Subway sandwich shops in the Cleveland area, Ghazi Faddoul opened a Subway inside the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, a recreational and cultural facility that offers yoga classes and preschool.
To locate there, Mr. Faddoul had to make the menu kosher, which meant removing ham and bacon, replacing the cheese with a soy-based substitute and keeping an Orthodox Jew on hand at all times to supervise food preparation. In observance of the Jewish Sabbath, Mr. Faddoul closes the restaurant early on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.
