Jersey Mike’s this week announced its first expansion agreement on the other side of the Atlantic, a 400-unit deal in the United Kingdom and Ireland with a company known as JM Submarines, owned by none other than the chain’s founder, Peter Cancro.
“He started this brand when he was 17 years old, ran it for 50 years, sold it to Blackstone last year,” CEO Charlie Morrison said in an interview this week at the ICR Conference in Orlando. “He still has that entrepreneur spirit, and he wants to continue to grow, and I support that a lot.
“I mean, who better to grow in a new market overseas than the founder of the company? That’s pretty unique.”
Cancro, who remains Jersey Mike’s chairman, had been talking about opening locations in Europe for some time.
He told Morrison that he was interested in being the one to do so shortly after Morrison’s arrival. In some respects, establishing a European beachhead for the company he founded brings Cancro to his early days of building Jersey Mike’s into what would become the nation’s second-largest sandwich chain. “I’ve lived and breathed this brand my entire life,” Cancro said in a statement.
For Jersey Mike’s, the move represents a step up in its international aggressiveness. The chain operates about 3,200 locations, but only 21 of those are outside the U.S., all of which are in Canada.
The company opens about 300 locations per year and believes it still has plenty of white space domestically. But opening outside the U.S. will be key for the brand’s long-term growth and is a clear path toward the type of value creation that the private-equity firm Blackstone was looking for when it bought the chain last year.
The Canadian locations have done well, proving that the concept can work outside the U.S. And now Cancro, the company’s founder, will prove that it can work on the other side of the pond.
“We’re really ready to go step on the gas and grow a lot faster outside the U.S.,” Morrison said.
Sub sandwiches are well established outside the U.S., thanks to the international presence of the Miami-based Subway, which operates more than 16,000 locations outside the U.S.
But those markets will not be as familiar with the type of deli-style sandwiches Jersey Mike’s serves, Morrison noted. “I think that’ll be a real opportunity for us,” Morrison said, to take advantage of the white space we have in front of us and grow not just in the U.S. but overseas as well.”
That said, Morrison said the company wouldn’t necessarily make a fast push internationally. He said the company needs to develop the infrastructure, the supply chain, operations and real estate. He also said the brand needs to understand the consumer and their taste preferences.
So Cancro will get time to develop the market. “It’s not a real play for us,” Morrison said before noting that the company would look to move further into Europe and then over time the Middle East and Asia.
“We really haven’t laid out a specific playbook yet,” he said. “We’re going to work through that over the course of the next six to 12 months and make sure we have the right approach that has long staying power.”
Regardless, Morrison believes that Cancro, much like he did with the brand 50 years ago, will get everything in place to ensure that Jersey Mike’s succeeds with this growth step.
“He clearly knows the market well,” Morrison said. “He’s going to partner well in the market to make sure he’s got all the right people around him to be successful.”
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