Alidoro opened in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood 40 years ago and has taken its own sweet time expanding, but the premium sandwich chain now has its infrastructure in place and plans to grow from seven to 10 locations in its hometown over the next year, and then expand to new markets.
“We've made some serious advancements in our infrastructure to position us for scale,” said CEO Jon Streep, who bought the concept from Walter Momente (who bought it from founder Alessandro Gualandi in 2001) around 2014 and then oversaw the opening of its second location, and future flagship, in Midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park area. It has since expanded to local landmarks and transit hubs, including Rockefeller Center, Moynihan Train Hall (attached to Penn Station), Madison Square Park, and a food hall called The Hugh, as well as Terminal 8 at John F. Kennedy Airport.
The newest location is slated to open this month at the Empire State Building, and a second JFK location, at Terminal 6, is expected to open in November.
“Transit hubs are definitely a vertical we’re very serious about pursuing further,” Streep said.
Each location is a bit different, and that’s part of Streep’s vision.
“If you go to one of our stores and then you go to another, there’s definitely a common theme, but they’re very. different from one another,” he said. “I like stores having their own identity.”
Alidoro has a loyal cult following for its sandwiches, which used to be considered premium but now fall more in line with the prices of many sandwich shops in New York City. They’re priced starting at $14 for the Mona Lisa, made with fresh mozzarella, crema bianca, artichokes, and eggplant caponata on a locally supplied roll, and ranging up to $19.59 for the Fratelli, a hot sandwich of porchetta, fresh mozzarella, roasted sweet peppers, arugula, lemon basil pesto, and a signature spicy Italian chile paste called “hot spread.”
The signature Alidoro sandwich is a cold build of prosciutto, hot peppers, roasted sweet peppers, arugula, fennel, mushroom paste, and hot spread for $18.50.
“Everyone remembers the first time they had an Alidoro sandwich,” said Streep, who had his in 2004.
Streep started in public relations and moved on to run events, then real estate development, and then new media such as digital apps.
“At around 30, I decided if I don't make the jump to do something I really want to do, not just something I know how to do, I'll never do it.”
As a native of New Jersey, Streep describes himself as “a sandwich guy.”
“It’s in my blood, and I knew I always wanted to [sell] sandwiches.
“Alidoro always stuck in my mind, and I’d known Walter [Momente] as a customer for seven-plus years. I met with him and said, ‘This may sound silly, but I actually think this could be a global brand, which he kind of snickered at, but a couple of weeks later I had a business plan — at least an initial vision for what I thought it could do.”
Gualandi had never thought of expanding, and neither had Momente, and it showed in the way the business was run.
“Walter probably had 50 vendors — maybe 40. He had four different bread vendors for six different types of bread,” Streep said. “It just was what it was, and it was beautiful, but it was a headache.”
He cut his vendor list roughly in half at the outset.
Meanwhile, all of the condiments were made in-house, “which is easy when you have one or two stores, but once you get beyond that everything can go wrong.”
He started having weekly manager meetings in which they would compare house-made ingredients such as lemon basil pesto and hot peppers.
“They’re all unique to us, they’re paramount to what we do,” he said. But each one was different.
“If you can’t do it with five stores, how are you going to do it with 10, or 20?”
So he began the search for an offsite partner kitchen to make the ingredients instead.
“It probably took five years to find a partner who could do this properly, but now I have one, and I have also integrated them directly into my distribution partner who can move it anywhere I need — I never could have opened in JFK without that partnership.”
That airport location is the only one that isn’t company-owned, and the one at Terminal 6 will also be licensed, but other than that Streep plans to keep the restaurants company-owned.
With systems in place and a healthy balance sheet — Streep said the restaurants have an average unit volume of $2.3 million on $26 check averages — he’s now looking to expand to the suburbs, or possibly Chicago, a city whose sandwich culture he admires and where he things Alidoro would thrive.
“I would very likely pursue a hub-and-spoke model,” he said, with a local producer distributing to restaurants in the new market.
Whatever second market Streep pursues, he said the restaurants would remain company-owned, although he said he would consider franchising down the road.
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