After Jersey Mike’s came dangerously close to bankruptcy, CEO Peter Cancro learned to prepare for the worst— which set him up for lasting success.
One night in 1975, 17-year-old Peter Cancro knocked on his high school football coach’s front door in Ocean County, N.J. Cancro, a senior and the team’s quarterback, was there to ask for a $125,000 loan to buy the sub shop he’d worked at for the past four years. Hours later, Cancro left with the loan, a seven-year payback plan, and the intent to purchase Mike’s Subs.
Since then, he’s turned that small sub shop into Jersey Mike’s, a national franchise with 1,400 locations nationwide and more than $1 billion in annual sales. It’s the fastest-growing sandwich chain in the U.S., with more than 18 percent sales growth year over year, according to industry research firm Technomic. (Firehouse Subs, its closest competitor in sales growth, achieved less than 5 percent growth last year.) But there were brutal bumps in the road, including a dance with bankruptcy that changed the way Cancro runs his business.
How did you get your start at the sub shop that would become Jersey Mike’s?
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Denne historien er fra September 2018-utgaven av Entrepreneur.
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How Small Shops Take Big Risks - It's not easy for mom-and-pops to try something new, because they rarely have a safety net to fail.But there are ways to innovate cautiously-as one small business on our list, All My Heart tattoo studio, has found.
The Charlotte, North Carolina, studio is airy and suffused with natural light. In the reception area, there are modular chairs, midcentury couches, and a vase of fresh flowers on a Japanese-influenced cabinet. But the real surprise goes beyond aesthetics. All My Heart's owner, Graham Beech, isn't just playing with a new look; he's trying out a whole new business model. Historically, tattoo shops have wanted to control the clientele, and use the tattoo artist as kind of a cog in the wheel, Beech says. What's different about our business is that the client is the artist, and they have their own individual clients.
5 Ways to Multitask Your Fall - From a corporate office to working from the living room, Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong has five new products designed to make putting in the hours more enjoyable.
From a corporate office to working from the living room, Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong has five new products designed to make putting in the hours more enjoyable.
You Can Hire Like Netflix - The streaming platform built an incredible team with a strategy called
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Speedy Growth Killed My Startup - We seemed to be rocking it-lots of press, major partnerships. Then we learned the harsh consequences of overlooking our customers.
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How to Hire for the Future - Small businesses are struggling to find quality labor. So flip the conversation: Show workers how your business will set them up for opportunity.
Small businesses have a hiring problem. According to the July monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 19% of small businesses rank the inability to find quality labor as the single most important issue facing their company, while 38% reported job openings they could not fill. Overall, 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
Three Pivots to $100 Million - How do you find a working business model? Do it like Rowan-a brand that reinvented itself many times before finally piercing the ear-piercing market
If you have a tween girl, you've probably heard of Rowan. It's the cool brand for piercings, where licensed nurses insert hypoallergenic studs into thousands of ears every day. With more than 500 employees, it's on track to have 65 stores and an annual run rate of $100 million in revenue this year.But in 2017, Rowan was just a fledgling startup with a great idea and a bad business model. It survived because founder Louisa Schneider was willing to pivot, and pivot, and pivot again, until its mission, profit, and market all clicked into place.
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For their business to work, Dianne and Gabrielle Melillo need more than customers. They need a community that has total confidence in them.
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The former CEO of Yum! Brands explains how he turned around a struggling KFC and the important lesson it offers for anyone in franchising.
THE CURSE OF GROWING TOO FAST
FAIRE is a platform for small businesses, but it grew big the wrong way-almost becoming a $12 billion wreck. Here's how it fixed the problem, and why you should think twice before skyrocketing.
HOW TO ASK FAMILY FOR MONEY
Your friends-and-family fundraising round doesn't have to be scary and awkward. Here's advice from one of the world's leading investors.
