Peter Cancro has a couple of framed charts on the wall showing the steady slope of Jersey Mike’s expansion stretching to 1998. This past year, the sandwich brand opened as many as 20 stores on a single Wednesday. “And there was nothing to it,” Cancro says.
Extrapolate to a full week and Jersey Mike’s could find itself opening more than 1,000 units per year. While that kind of rate is not in the works, the point Cancro is making is it’s not an outlandish thing to imagine. And that puts what happened roughly a year ago into perspective.
Jersey Mike’s grew by a net 314 restaurants in 2024. That after adding 288 and 296 restaurants, respectively, in the prior two years. Leading up to 2023, Jersey Mike’s scaled by 1,055 units over a five-year period. So if you go back to 2016, the brand had 1,187 restaurants on average-unit volumes of $825,000. It exited 2024 with 2,989 stores (the number is closer to 3,075 today) and AUVs of $1.339 million. Put plainly, Jersey Mike’s could more than triple in size over a decade-long window by the time next year ends.
Yet several months ago, Cancro noticed some “cracks” in the system. He’s been around this industry quite a while (his five-decade anniversary of buying “Mike’s Subs” just recently passed) and knows the history. Many chains, especially sandwich ones, have grown at rapid clips. But where are they now?
Cancro wasn’t going to ignore the signs. Some Jersey Mike’s were shutting grills down early. Others weren’t as clean as they needed to be. Were they staffing appropriately to the rush?
Cancro brought leaders to the Breakers Palm Beach resort and stopped national expansion. He gave back “140 of 1,000 something” fees and told operators to address their stores. Do more training. Focus on people.
“Does everybody remember all these chains?” Cancro recalls telling the group, referencing some tales like Quiznos and Blimpie. “We don’t want to be one of them.”
Cancro got in front of leaders and shared, while Jersey Mike’s wanted to grow, of course, it was halting if it couldn’t do so for the right reasons. “We showed that we care because we stopped growth on a national level,” he says. “We got everybody’s attention.”
Cancro says the lesson resonated and, at the company’s mid-March national convention, there were two growth seminars. Again, it’s a moment that encapsulated a lot of what the past few months have looked like for Jersey Mike’s since its reported $8 billion sale to private equity giant Blackstone in November (the deal closed January 16): Cancro isn’t letting up or losing focus because the capital is there. He wants the brand to earn the right to grow just as it did when it was a challenger brand.
And speaking of such things, Jersey Mike’s might be one of the most well-known 3,000-unit enterprises in retail. The company gives stores area rights, 2–3 miles apart, which is partly why 85 percent of growth is coming from within. Cancro feels 7,500 or 10,000 locations (but not 30,000) is entirely within sight. But those openings aren’t catching customers off-guard.
As Cancro has shared before, awareness data shows Jersey Mike’s at about 90 percent—well ahead of some larger competitors and not that far behind the likes of Coca-Cola, which is at 99 percent. The fact it’s even in that orbit, Cancro says, is a baffling thing to consider.
He credits what happened in 2020, when Jersey Mike’s entered the national conscious. A week into COVID’s March onset, the brand’s sales tumbled 45 percent. Cancro awoke in the middle of the night, grabbed a pen, and wrote two commercials. He directed and starred in both—something he had never done.
It began with cause-related marketing. What’s continued to evolve, however, dates even further. Fifteen years ago, Cancro told CMO Rich Hope to “go get it.” That was a sponsorship of college basketball’s NCAA Tournament. People were watching less TV than they used to (streaming services, social media, etc., all entering the on-demand landscape). But they were still watching live sports.
So Jersey Mike’s was one of the first to sponsor college hoops. From there, it went to baseball; the CBS game of the week for college football; Notre Dame; the NHL.
Recently, the “golden ticket” surfaced. Jersey Mike’s last week announced a multiyear partnership with the NFL to become the official sub sandwich sponsor of the league. The agreement grants Jersey Mike’s exclusive marketing rights and designations, including hosting the NFL Draft Experience; a presenting sponsor of the Super Bowl experience and Don Shula High School Coach of the Year Award; NFL Flag sponsor; and backer of the Pro Bowl Games Fan Vote.
Cancro jokes it also frees Jersey Mike’s to finally call it the “Super Bowl” instead of the “Big Game.”
Marketing will begin shortly with spokesperson Danny DeVito trying out for quarterback, and other things. Perhaps Cancro will get on the field, too, he hints.
Although Cancro likes to keep moving and pushing and doesn’t always pause to reflect on life’s full circle, Jersey Mike’s began, as the well-worn story goes, with a loan from Rod Smith, a youth football coach and local bank executive who believed Cancro could run the sandwich shop he took a job at in 1971. The brand’s roots date to 1956.
Cancro last year had his jersey retired at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant Beach High School (graduate of the 1975 class). He’s a member of the state’s hall of fame.
The school recognized Cancro in September at a home game. “What an honor that was,” he says. “I was the third jersey that they retired. And then I said, ‘hey it’s good to be back home on the field.'”
Cancro started as a quarterback and switched to running back and defensive back. The school won a state championship. “I liked to hit people, what can I say?” Cancro quips.
Beyond the obvious—a NFL sponsorship will rocket awareness higher as Jersey Mike’s grows—it also signaled to the system two things, Cancro says. One, this deal represented a win and showcased how successful the past few years have been (it replaced Subway in the sponsorship). But two, it’s time to get to work. “What do we have to do this year? We have to do more training. We have to do back to basics. We have to share our lives with the customer. We have to be involved with our owners,” Cancro says. “So that never stops. I’m not a big fan of celebrating.”
“People say 50 years, congratulations. I go, yeah, last year was 49 years.”
The theme for 2025 at Jersey Mike’s is “Full Court Press.” Cancro never shies from a sports analogy. The notion this go-around is to not take their eye off the ball (another athletic reference). Former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke at the conference to get the idea across. “That’s when you were defending against the other team, they’d actually get upset with you,” Cancro says. “What are you doing? We’re full-court pressing your ass. That’s what we’re doing.”
The marketing budget these days for Jersey Mike’s sits at more than $200 million. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell prerecorded a message Cancro played for owners at the meeting. With a larger profile, he says, operators understand they must hold the bar even steadier on the operational strengths that separate Jersey Mike’s, which is why it was so critical to not let those slide amid net unit expansion.
Namely, meat sliced fresh and hot sandwiches grilled to order and whole muscle product and USDA choice top rounds. Offerings more akin to local mom-and-pop delis than four-digit restaurant franchises. It’s the reason Cancro added “Jersey” to the store’s name those decades ago—he felt it signaled a certain kind of sandwich and experience the same way “Texas” might give Texas Roadhouse clout in the beef game (a story there being founder Kent Taylor rented a PO box in Texas and put it on comment cards when he opened the first location to give customers the appearance of Longhorn state DNA, even though the brand was based in Louisville, Kentucky).
More awareness and more locations will also offer Jersey Mike’s a chance to give back. It recently raised more than $30 million for charities for its annual Day of Giving, when operators donate 100 percent of sales, not just profits, on their own accord. It’s not required by corporate. This year’s number beat last year’s $25 million as Jersey Mike’s keeps breaking records by adding more locations into the pool. The total is north of $100 million in the past 15 years.
Charity has always been central to why Cancro does this and how he remains so invested—a question he understandably fields a good deal of late. With the Blackstone sale, Cancro retained 10 percent of the company and stayed in the CEO seat. He’s also chairman of the board.
Cancro says his role hasn’t adjusted all that much. He still goes into stores, gets behind the counter, talks to crews, and hosts town halls, where Jersey Mike’s gets managers and assistant managers to a location and opens the floor. Cancro says he never really considered himself a CEO. He didn’t have the title on a business card. Instead, it read, “Peter Cancro.”
“I’m an advocate for the people wearing the apron,” he says. “Trying to tell the owners to pay them more. To appreciate them, commit to their people, and I’ll tell you, it’s really worked.”
Jersey Mike’s is trying to raise GMs over $100,000 per year. They work half-day Saturdays and take Sundays off. In company units, the pay is closer to $125,000–$150,000 and some are making $200,000 or more, if it’s a high-volume unit.
Watching employees climb has been one of his passions. Cancro mentions Daniel Watts, a 31-year-old area director who’s spent a third of his life with Jersey Mike’s. Watts joined as a crew member in 2012 at a store in San Diego when he was 19. He was on his way out a few years later, after elevating to manager, when Cancro walked into a store. Watts made Cancro a top-notch sandwich and the CEO asked him to stay and become part of something bigger. Now, Watts oversees Oregon, Washington, and Jersey Mike’s 50th state, Alaska, which he helped open in May 2023. He directs the corporate store division in the Pacific Northwest as well. “You should see the shift as a leader. He pulls people along, he doesn’t push. He has all the attributes,” Cancro says. Watts was also a former running back.
Cancro says engaging employees and seeing these kind of journeys keeps him “cranked up.” That’s especially true of getting behind the line and trying to impress staff.
“You put yourself on their level and not like this big shot,” he says. “That’s how it was when I first worked at Mike’s. Victor Merlow [who bought the original store with his brother, Frank, from Edmund Navickas] was the owner and he was part of the team, part of the crew. When I was 14, I walked into Mike’s Subs and my voice mattered. And that’s the culture I see going across the country.”
To bring yet another sports adage into the fold, when will Cancro know it’s time to hang it up? He recounts in the early days being asked by “Wall Street guys” what he was doing. They’d make the hour or so drive down and try to entice him with brighter lights. You make subs for a living?
“I’d go, yeah, I guess I do,” Cancro says.
Sometimes, when asked what his business is today, he’ll lie and say, “I manage a hedge fund” to see if anybody asks another question. They never do. “But as soon as I say, well, I slice ham, salami, and turkey, they go, ‘excuse me?’ And then start asking questions,” Cancro says.
A new friend of Cancro’s, Jack Cowin, an industry icon who brought KFC to Australia and founded and runs Hungry Jack’s, Burger King’s franchise in the country, as well as being the top shareholder of Domino’s footprint there, recently shared some wisdom with Cancro. He had a new slogan: “We’re going to work ourselves to death.”
Was Cowin, who is 82 years old, being flippant or literal? Cancro says that’s not really the rub. The message is he’s not going to stop. Jersey Mike’s won’t, either.
“We’re going to keep coming. It’s what we do,” he says.
