Fred DeLuca Quotes

Six months after we started, in 1964, there was a day when we sold only seven sandwiches. If we'd taken all the money from the register, we couldn't have paid an employee, much less the food or the rent or all that. It could have been a turning point. We could have given up.

Subway is a real point of pride. We have influenced the way people eat.

Even if you set a long-term goal, that doesn't mean it's a straight-line journey. Often, there are problems and obstacles along the way.

In some markets, we don't have a lot of room to expand. We've done studies of store density and essentially found our more dense markets have more than one store per 15,000 people.

I don't think I ever dreamt of going into business. No one in my family was in business.

You start a business, and you really don't have much of a budget.

I was 17 years old when I built the first store ... A very simple, basic store with a basic counter - not very much equipment, all purchased second-hand. And the menu was very simple.

You could have everything right but be in the wrong place. You think your business is no good, but really, the problem is your place is no good.

The payroll tax is affecting sales. It's causing sales declines.

I tell everybody there are only three things that we do. We build sales at the store level, we build profits at the store level, and we build more stores. The first two things go in tandem, of course. It's pretty tough to build profits without sales.

Higher unemployment generally bodes well for franchising. People are looking for a new opportunity, and people who have jobs are a little less confident they'll always have a job.

A lot of stuff happens daily when you're running a company like Subway. If you get too happy about some things or too unhappy about others, you get worn out. It's best if you can pace yourself a little bit more.

Back in the early days of international, everybody wanted to customize the menu for every place.

The United States is a huge market, and once you get rolling, you can replicate that model over and over pretty easily. Your supply lines are taken care of. You don't have technicians to deal with. You've got your customer base.

For a franchise system to work well, you really need people with an entrepreneurial mind-set because, while you have a large, overarching system that everybody has to work with, a lot of local issues have to be handled.

When we first started the company, I didn't have any thoughts of franchising. We just had company-owned stores.

Everybody eats three times a day; it's only a question of where they choose to eat. The longer-term trends are people eat out more often.

Every time I come across learning items of interest, I'll send distribution voice mail to the appropriate group in the organization.

We find that no matter what country we're in, if we hit the right economic notes and appeal to the mass market, we're able to build the business very, very rapidly.

I went to school because I was supposed to. I did pre-med because my mum thought it was a good idea.

Profit or perish ... There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs.

Everybody who goes through the business will make mistakes. The big question is how big will the mistakes be? How fast will they learn from the mistakes, and how quickly will they get the business in the correct direction?

To a large extent, we're working hard to fulfill the consumer demand for Subway sandwiches.

After 39 years of business, I'm still learning. I go through this every year -identifying new strategies that are extremely important.

A couple times a year, I get in the car, and I'll drive 1,000 miles cross-country, going through side streets. I'll stay off the highways as much as possible. And I realize it's a huge country, and for us to be in so many places in the country is an amazing thing.

I know a lot of people at some point in their business careers decide they'll just cash in and do something else, but for some reason, I've never had that feeling.

By and large, we're a bread-eating culture. People like sandwiches. We don't really over-think that one.

I was able to solve enough big problems along the way that the sheriff didn't come along and put the 'bankruptcy' sign up.

We're very much in the people business in that there are two important groups you have to work with: customers and employees.

I watch 'Shark Tank,' of course. It's very entertaining. I think it's actually good to help people think about the business they might start, and sometimes you get encouraged by looking at someone going into business and saying, 'Hey, I could do that.'

If you treat people nicely, and you allow them to fulfill a role that is satisfying for them, they'll accomplish a lot, and they'll enjoy their work.

When you're invested in your own business, you're going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they're going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's harder to get if headquarters is running things.

We have salads, some other beverages. But in reality, it's still fundamentally the same business. The most likely thing the next person will buy is a sandwich and a soft drink. After a half-century of glacial change, we're still pretty much the same business.

Most of the people we sign on as development agents commit to goals they don't believe are possible.

How you handle the obstacles has a big impact on how you do. If you give up, then you obviously don't get there, but if you're persistent, and you keep thinking of new ways to approach the business, you're more likely to reach your goal.

If someone wants to eat healthy, they can do that and get the sandwich exactly right. I'm so pleased we're able to influence so many people and their eating habits.

You really have to understand this isn't a business where you sit in the back room and do calculations - you have to be very concerned about employees and customers, because that's really what's going to bring you success.