Jay Yates had neither capital, fast food experience nor much of a business history when he started hunting in the early ‘90s for an opportunity to make some money, and the quest wasn’t going well. Every potential backer or partner wanted to see his financial records, and the twentysomething resident of Greenville, North Carolina, had none. Meantime, he couldn’t get his college buddies to stop yakking about the sandwiches they’d wolfed down while at school, from a place called Jersey Mike’s Subs.
Figuring he had nothing to lose, the one-time tanning salon operator cold-called the fast-food operation’s main number and asked to speak with someone about a mutual business opportunity. Instead of being sloughed off as a crazy, Yates ended up speaking to the CEO, with nary a mention of a P&L.
How about I meet you down in Greensboro, and we can talk face to face, the executive suggested. Never mind that Jersey Mike’s was 700 miles away.
Sure enough, the CEO turned up in a beast of a station wagon that would also serve as his sleeping accommodation for the night. He introduced himself as Peter Cancro, and, working mainly off a vibe, agreed to let Yates open the first Jersey Mike’s in the Carolinas and the 26th store in the system overall.
The unit is still selling subs today, along with 101 other units in a market Yates serves as area developer and franchisee. An individual who once couldn’t pull together a P&L is now overseeing a business operation generating more than $130 million in annual sales.
Except for a name, the place and a few other details, the same story could be cited by the dozens of individuals who became part of Jersey Mike’s as Cancro built the 2,700 chain from the single store he bought at age 17, using a loan from his Pop Warner football coach.
Today that business is reported to be worth in the neighborhood of $8 billion—if Cancro should decide to sell, a decision he’s apparently not yet made. But suitors have come forward, including Blackstone, the nation’s largest private-equity firm.
More amazing to teammates than Cancro’s highly personal style is how it’s persisted for 49 years, as Jersey Mike’s rose from a regional favorite to a dominant national player remaking the sandwich segment. It’s now poised for international expansion, and Cancro is ready to try his approach with a second domestic concept.
The numbers may be much larger now, and the station wagon is long gone. But you’d be hard-pressed, they say, to craft even a short list of how Cancro’s approach to the business is different today.
“He hasn’t changed in 30 years,” says Yates.
It’s a common assessment among the key associates who’ve joined him in building Jersey Mike’s into an industry leader. Many have been on that journey with Cancro since Unit No. 1. Through what seemed like serendipity, they ended up in key roles that were actually foreseen for them by Cancro, who’s proven a master time again at spotting talent.
Chad Tirpack, for instance, is a regional VP of operations. He was recruited to join Jersey Mike’s after Cancro saw him tending bar and spotted something special in the young man.
Suggestions that Cancro’s success may have turned him into a corporate suit bring outright derision. For one thing, associates say, sightings of him in a suit are rarer than confirmed yeti spottings. His formal outfit of choice is a set of khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt and a navy blazer.
He may no longer sleep in his car, but the South Jersey native still doesn’t have an office, preferring to drop in on executives and chat across their desks.
Memos are not his thing but listening undoubtedly is, say those associates. He’ll pull up a personal detail about someone that was offered in passing long ago, often about something that happened in their lives rather than an aspect of the business. And he tends to ask more than he tells.
It's that ears-open approach that left his team unsurprised about Cancro being named this year’s Restaurant Leader of the Year, an honor that will be bestowed on him at this week’s Restaurant Leadership Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.
They stress that listening is not a passive activity for Cancro. Out of the blue, he’ll offer help, be it financial, like funding a swimming program for the quadriplegic sibling of an area developer, or sharing an insight from his own time as parent, manager or sandwich maker.
He characterizes giving to those around him as a duty, and he’s made that a cornerstone of Jersey Mike’s culture. Every March, the brand holds a Day of Giving, where every penny collected in sales by all 2,700 units is donated to local charities. Participation is voluntary for
franchisees, but not one has passed in the decades since the giveback began.
The other 30 days in the month compose the Month of Giving, where units raise additional money from guests, employees and members of the community.
This year, the efforts netted $25 million in donations to 200 charities.
Even that generosity has been a constant. Tom Spiegel has known and remained close to Cancro since they were in first grade at St. Peter’s, a Catholic grammar school in south Jersey, the heart of Springsteen territory. They were part of a posse that went to high school together, played football together, listened to music together and white-knuckled trips together in Cancro’s infamous station wagon. (“Peter was always a crazy driver,” Spiegel explains.)
The rest of the crew went off to college, while Cancro stayed home to run the original Jersey Mike’s, a veritable money machine. During one school break, a cash-flush Cancro offered to treat the gang to dinner at one of the area’s swankiest restaurants, the Royal Hawaiian. But the others demurred, pointing out that they couldn’t meet the establishment’s dress code. So Cancro bought suits for the eight of them, even popping for the tailoring.
“He was the same person,” says Yates.
Some of that giving might leave other chain CEOs apoplectic. Several years ago, units of Jersey Mike’s were in need of a facelift and an injection of technology. The cost penciled out to about $75,000 per store, an expenditure franchisees were bound by their licensing agreement to make.
Cancro’s number-crunching showed the franchisees would need to collectively spend about $150 million. For the sake of speed, and to
show franchisees their franchisor had skin in the game, Cancro had the home office pay for everything.
More recently, the CEO instituted a program aimed at turning standout unit managers into owners. Cancro decided the best way to do it was just to give them a store, with corporate or a franchisee assuming the risk and picking up the expense.
Since the program began two years ago, more than 100 employees have become Jersey Mike’s owner-operators.
The initiative, the Coach Rod Smith Award, is named after the football coach and local banker who loaned a teenaged Cancro the money to buy the original Jersey Mike’s.
There have been mistakes along the way, to be sure. At one point, Jersey Mike’s started the paperwork to go public. A short ways into the effort, the public equities market tanked, and the chain had to back off.
There were also explorations of a pair-up with Domino’s, the alma mater of Jersey Mike’s president Hoyt Jones. The pizza chain wanted to stake out a larger share of the lunchtime market by adding sandwiches. Pizza, meantime, would have given Jersey Mike’s a major dinner draw.
But the negotiations didn’t lead to a merger or co-branding collaboration.
There were also a few unit-level misfires. An experiment with a soft-serve dessert is remembered as less than a triumph, and customers and area developers alike were not wowed by the chain’s first credit-card payment technology.
Yet other head-shaking moves proved dead-on. At the height of the pandemic, when the industry’s supply lines were severely strained, Cancro decided that Jersey Mike’s should put more meat on its
sandwiches. The notion helped to solidify the concept’s image as a premium sandwich worth a little bit more.
Still holding on?
Jersey Mike’s can be generous without drawing fire from shareholders because Cancro owns the brand outright. That could change if he should sell all or part of it, a move he says is a possibility, given the multi-billion-dollar valuations he’s seen other sandwich operations recently fetch.
The price tag that came to light in reported discussions with the investment behemoth Backstone was $8 billion.
“You never know. We’ve got people knocking on your door,” he said when asked in early March about a sale. “Can we go public? We don’t have to.”
Cancro has emphasized that a sale is not a certainty. Though he now has a second home in Florida, he still works seven days a week for Jersey Mike’s, holding to a hands-on style that’s decidedly Cancro-esque.
It’s an especially unique stye for the CEO and virtual founder of a chain that generates an estimated $3.4 billion in annual systemwide sales.
It’s also what’s earned him the selection by the Restaurant Business editorial team as this year’s Restaurant Leader of the Year, an honor previously bestowed on the likes of Danny Meyer, mega-franchisee Greg Flynn, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich and Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed, among others.
Cancro will be presented with the award on Monday at the Restaurant Leadership Conference, Restaurant Business’ annual top-to-top conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, for chain executives.
We can confirm at this time that he won’t be bunking in a station wagon.
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