opened at nine to prepare for customers. One of us cut up the vegetables: onions, tomatoes, green peppers, and even olives, while the other sliced the ham, cheese, and salami, a half pound of each. A half pound seemed right to me because that’s the amount mom would ask me to buy when she sent me to the store for our family.
By 9:30 we were ready for business and patiently waiting when a young neighborhood girl rode up on her bicycle. We smiled as she walked in and ordered the first sandwich. This was a critical moment in the history of Pete’s Super Submarines, but not for the obvious reason.
Yes, it was our first sale, but now I had to teach Art how to make a submarine sandwich. Even though I planned to go into the sub business, and I traveled to Portland to watch Amato’s, and I rented and built the store bought the food and equipment, I had yet to make a single sandwich. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Within an hour I had to leave Art in charge of the restaurant. Coincidentally to our opening day, the University of Bridgeport scheduled an English capability exam at 11:00 a.m. for entering freshmen. I had to take the test, and that meant I had to leave Art alone in the restaurant for a couple of hours. Pete, his wife, and my parents planned to help out later in the day, but until they arrived, or I returned, Art would have to handle things on his own. That meant he had to know how to make sandwiches.
Actually, making sandwiches didn’t seem to be too difficult. By the time we had left Maine a few weekends earlier, we had thoroughly discussed the details of how to make our sandwiches. We talked about how to cut the bread, how to layer the meat and cheese, the vegetables, the oil, and the seasonings. As Art watched me that morning, he didn’t think it was much of a challenge, either. Good thing, because our first customer was our last customer before I left the restaurant. Art was on his own with one sandwich worth of training.
At approximately 12:20 p.m., the English exam now a successful but distant memory, I returned to our restaurant parking lot and it was packed. As I glanced over at the shop I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only were customers crammed inside, they were standing in line outside! It was the noontime rush, and all I could figure was that a lot of people had come to the restaurant, or the service was very slow. As it turned out, it was a little of both.
Walking across the parking lot I spotted my partner. “How you doing, Pete?” I said with a measure of excitement in my voice. I noticed he was carrying a brown bag. “What do you have?” I asked.
“Knives,” he responded. Pete had arrived earlier and discovered that we only had one knife for slicing vegetables and making sandwiches. “We can’t serve all of these people with just one knife.”
Having worked at a hardware store I knew there were many types of knives, all priced differently, some cheaper than others. Pete had purchased two knives at $3 each and I cringed. That was going to put a crimp in our budget, but there was no time to do anything about it. We rushed into the restaurant and went to work, furiously taking care of customers.
Since we didn’t know anything about establishing an operational system, we didn’t have one that first day, or for many weeks thereafter. Consequently, we had a continuous line of customers and we were behind the eight ball. It didn’t help matters that our tiny shop was designed as a one- or two-person operation and there were now six people working in it: Pete, his wife, my parents, Art, and myself. As best we could, we each found a place to work. Art had transferred his masterful sandwich making training to the others, so they were busy behind the sandwich counter. I walked to the back room where we had several bushel baskets of green peppers. I turned over one empty basket for a place to sit and used two full baskets to support a piece of plywood that served as a table where I could cut vegetables. Then I went to work replenishing the vegetable supply at the counter.
The line out front never gave out and every so often I took a curiosity break to see who was in the restaurant. Occasionally a friend came out of the line to congratulate me, and I immediately took advantage of the opportunity. “Let me give you a tour,” I’d say. Then I’d proceed to explain, “This is the counter we built. Here is the cash register. Over here is the partition we built to hide the back room, and”—pointing now to my makeshift work station—“here’s where I’m cutting vegetables. Why don’t you have a seat here and help cut some vegetables?” I recruited five more people out of the line to help us that day.
By 5:30 in the afternoon mom told me we were nearly out of food. We had sold almost all of the rolls, twenty-five dozen, and we were low on meat and cheese. So I ran out to an Italian deli to buy more supplies. It was late in the day, however, and I returned with only another dozen rolls. Within an hour, we ran out of food, but fortunately, we also ran out of line at the same time. We had planned to remain open until 11:00 p.m., but at 6:30, having sold 312 sandwiches, we closed the doors. What an unbelievable day!
When the last customer had left, and our group started cleaning up, Pete and I moved outside to sit on the curb at the edge of the parking lot. We had that exhausted-but-satisfied feeling that athletes experience when they win a big victory. As we reviewed the day, we could hardly believe our success, and our anticipated good fortune.
“If all of these people showed up today,” I said exuberantly, “and hardly anyone knows we exist, imagine tomorrow!”
“They’ll all come back and the next time they’ll bring their friends. We’re going to do great. We’re going to be millionaires!” Pete said confidently.
Reveling in the glory of our opening day success we couldn’t help but think the customers loved our restaurant. All we had to do now was build more restaurants and attract more customers.
Of course, it wouldn’t work quite that way. There was a challenge around every curve, and the first curve was just ahead. We soon discovered that while we sat on the curb that day, we had committed the sin of counting our chickens before they hatched!
Monday Night Quarterbacks
Several days after we opened Pete’s Super Submarines, I entered the freshman class at the University of Bridgeport as a commuter student, and possibly the only student who owned a small business, although that meant nothing to me at the time. Even with a full load of sixteen credit hours, I managed to arrange my schedule so that I attended classes in the mornings, worked in the shop in the afternoons and early evenings, and studied at night. Some days it was possible to study in the shop, but I didn’t look forward to those days because it could only mean that business was slow.
Mine was a busy schedule, but not especially difficult. Every day presented a new challenge or opportunity. Mondays, however, became particularly important in my routine. Following our research trip to Maine, when there was a lot of work to be done, Pete and I began meeting weekly to assess our progress and evaluate our plans. Now that our shop was open for business, a weekly meeting continued to be a good exercise to monitor our development, review our progress, and plan for the future. Each week we met at the same place—World Headquarters—also known as my mom’s kitchen table.
On Monday nights Pete left work at about five and drove from Armonk to our co-op apartment in Bridgeport. Right after six he would walk through the back door into our kitchen where my mom was minutes away from serving a spaghetti dinner, including homemade sauce and meatballs. I was there waiting for him, anticipating his first question, which he asked religiously upon arrival: “How’s business?”
I always answered with the number of sandwiches sold by 6:00 p.m. that day. A few minutes before Pete’s arrival I would call the store for an update from our employee. Pete didn’t want to know dollars and cents, only the number of sandwiches sold. If the number was high, Pete smiled. If it was low, he frowned. After I announced the number, Pete joined my family at the table and we enjoyed mom’s dinner. We made a point not to talk about business while we ate.
