On a recent phone call, James North lets out a chuckle and confesses he has a rather freaky story to share.

Back in 1998, North, having just finished college, traveled some 7,500 miles from his native New Zealand to Alaska. There, on the other end of the world, North found himself sharing a cabin and riding ATVs with a fast-talking, eccentric, Illinois-bred entrepreneur incessantly boasting about the world’s greatest gourmet sandwiches.

“His personality was huge,” North says today of his chance encounter with Jimmy John Liautaud, the founder of Jimmy John’s. “So huge that I was a believer before I even tried the sandwiches.”

Before leaving Alaska, Liautaud invited North to work for his growing restaurant enterprise, one then hurtling toward 100 stores, many of them scattered around college towns in the Midwest. Though flattered, North initially dismissed the offer.

“It seemed crazy,” North says. “Why would I come to America to make sandwiches?”

But, buoyed by his own adventurous spirit and Liautaud’s unabashed boldness, North eventually changed his mind. Months later, he navigated his way to Champaign, Illinois, home to the flagship University of Illinois campus. Directed to work in a Champaign storefront, North says he was relieved when Liautaud told him the store’s operating hours were “10 to 3.”

“This will be easy,” North thought of the presumed five-hour window, failing to realize, of course, that Liautaud, who built his sandwich empire by being bold and distinctive, meant 10 a.m. to 3 a.m.

On his first shift, North endured a 12-hour, 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. grind that perfectly represented the always enterprising, sometimes irreverent world Liautaud had created, one characterized by door-to-door delivery of $4 sandwiches with catchy names like The Vito Geneveso and The Pepe, and a store that teased guests with “free smells.”

Now, 21 years later, North remains with Jimmy John’s, its president since 2004 and its CEO for the last five years. He could have never envisioned this ride back in 1998.

“Jimmy John has a special talent for taking ordinary people and pushing them to do extraordinary things,” he says of his larger-than-life, long-time boss. “That’s really the secret sauce to Jimmy John’s.”

And it’s that secret sauce that North and his fellow Jimmy John’s leaders are now working to pour over the entire Jimmy John’s system, a 2,800-unit enterprise eager to cement its standing as an industry powerhouse amid a quick-service environment seemingly growing more competitive, challenging, and complex by the day.

Acting in “different ways”

The modern quick-service world is a vastly different one than Liautaud encountered in 1983, the year in which the eventual Eastern Illinois University dropout launched his sandwich concept in Charleston, Illinois.

Back then, containing inebriated college students was among the biggest challenges Liautaud faced, so much so that he hired a bouncer for his flagship location. Today, however, with stores across 43 states, an army of franchisees, a performance-driven majority owner in Roark Capital Group, and myriad competition—both in the sandwich category as well as in the delivery space, one of Jimmy John’s long-held domains—the challenges are much more complex.

“We’ve got more competition than ever before, and it’s coming from everywhere,” North acknowledges.

Over the last two years, such present realities have fueled some uncommon steps for Jimmy John’s, a concept almost religiously focused on simplicity for the better part of its 36-year existence. The company has unveiled new menu items to appease diners, tested new technology aimed at enhancing the guest experience, and altered its media program to further spread the Jimmy John’s “Freaky Fresh! Freaky Fast!” gospel.

“This environment forces you to react in different ways,” North says.

Consider the menu, one largely unchanged throughout the last two decades—an unapologetic ode to streamlined operations and a “freaky fast” promise to make sandwiches in 30 seconds or less.

“The whole system is set up to help people make a 30-second sandwich, to execute with speed and precision,” North says, pointing to kitchens devoid of fryers, steamers, and other peripheral equipment, as well as a menu defined by one cheese and seven meats. “Inside stores, it’s all about the hustle, and we do things faster and better than anyone else.”

Since last summer, however, Jimmy John’s has carefully expanded its menu, rolling out its 16-inch Giant size (double the size of its original sandwich) and introducing a new 9-Grain Wheat sub. The company also added new condiments: sliced pickles and a Kickin’ Ranch sauce made daily with fresh buttermilk, puréed hot cherry peppers, and seasonings.

And earlier this year, Jimmy John’s unveiled its first-ever grab-and-go sandwich, the 13-inch, Parisian-inspired Frenchie, to inject even more convenience and speed into the operation. In a clever marketing play that captured headlines, Jimmy John’s followed up The Frenchie’s launch with a $30 limited-release pinot noir designed to pair with the salami, capicola, and provolone sandwich.

Jimmy John’s shined a spotlight on its menu changes, as well as its employees’ gusto for making gourmet sandwiches, with its “Freak Yeah” national television campaign. Launched last summer, the tongue-in-cheek, documentary-style spots featured real Jimmy John’s restaurant staff—so-called “freaks” —carefully slicing lettuce to 3/32 of an inch, crafting the brand’s new Kickin’ Ranch sauce in the restaurant’s open kitchen, and inspecting fresh-baked bread in the oven.

The ordinary doing the extraordinary, as North would call it.

“We focused on our employees because we see them as a huge competitive advantage for us,” says chief marketing officer John Shea, a former Gatorade executive who joined Jimmy John’s in 2017.

To capture more scale and efficiency with its media buys, Jimmy John’s placed its “Freak Yeah” ads nationally, veering from its traditional market-by-market advertising approach.

“As we continue growing, the biggest opportunity is to raise awareness, especially as we move into places not as familiar with Jimmy John’s,” Shea says about the shift to a national media strategy.