Fresh Eats

Fresh Eats

franchises by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Honduras native Chris Andino didn't even speak English until he was 18. Today he runs one of the fastest growing Subway franchises on the Gulf Coast.

If someone can figure out how to turn an average-performing Subway sandwich shop in the middle of a tightly squeezed economy into a double-digit sales growth platter, it would be Chris Andino.

After all, Andino has spent a lifetime overcoming odds. No more so then the odyssey that began in the early 1970s, a few days after he turned 18 in his native Honduras. That's when his dad gave him a tidy present: A one-way ticket to the United States and an envelope with $100.

The younger Andino had mentioned going to the States a few weeks earlier, but partially as a joke. His dad though, was totally serious. Indeed, it was the only way Andino's father thought his son would make anything of himself, since economic opportunities in the U.S. were significantly better then they were in the Central American country back then.

"I was supposed to get myself to Iowa," says Andino, who didn't speak a word of English when his flight arrived in New Orleans. "I had no idea where Iowa was."

Andino, the oldest of 22 children, found the Hawkeye State, albeit somewhat groggy after a 24-hour bus ride through the Old South. And over the next 25 years he would go on to learn English, attend a few years of college, get married, start a family and work his way up to a senior level management position with a large Iowa-based grocery chain.

And then, in 2004, after overcoming a few more odds and helping others overcome their own odds, Andino and his wife, Keri Andino, relocated to Bradenton. By late last year, when a real estate career began tanking due to the faltering Gulf Coast housing market, the Andinos decided to invest a few hundred thousand dollars into buying a Subway franchise.

The Andinos have since turned that Subway they bought in October, in a strip mall on the outskirts of the Prime Outlets Mall in Ellenton, into one of the fastest growing in the Gulf Coast market.

While Andino, 54, says his franchise agreement doesn't allow him to release specific sales figures, he did say that overall sales are up 20% in the last five months. That's good to shoot up 40 spots, to the top 100, on the overall list of Tampa-area Subways, which are made up of 244 stores in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties.

What's more, the store has come in first place twice in the entire district's weekly sales competition.

Delivering service

The Andinos rather simple approach to their Subway store is essentially to combine a few basic business principles together under one customer-first banner. Still, while the principles are simple, anyone who has eaten at a fast food joint knows that they aren't always commonplace.

Call it the Triple-C sandwich: Convenience, cleanliness and caring for employees.

To achieve high marks for convenience, Keri Andino took advantage of the Subway's location near the outlet malls. First, she went around to the stores and struck up conversations with the assistant managers, clerks and shelf-stockers. She found that the slowing retail economy provided an unseen opportunity: It was clear that the stores were laying off employees as sales slowed, but what Andino also discovered was that the employees who kept their jobs were working longer hours with shorter breaks.

And these employees were hungry. Says Keri Andino: "We saw that the employees weren't being allowed out to eat."

So the Andinos decided to bring the food to the customers. Keri Andino pulled a rusty bicycle from her attic and started an outlet mall delivery service. The sandwich bike, which makes daily runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., has been a big hit. So big, Chris Andino estimates it's responsible for as much as half of the sales increases.

Keri Andino was proactive in promoting the store in other ways, too. For example, she took a tray of cookies, along with some catering brochures, to some of the non-outlet mall businesses, so the Subway isn't overly reliant on outlet mall-related sales.

Another customer convenience factor that Chris Andino treats as a business necessity is the food supply. He and the staff, for example, prepare the cold cuts and condiments every four to six hours as opposed to every day, like most other stores. It's costlier, but "the food is even fresher that way," says Chris Andino, in a play off the chain's Eat Fresh advertising campaign.

Chris Andino would also rather overstock food then have to tell a customer he's out of something. In fact, the truck driver that delivers the food to his store regularly comments on how no outlet on his route orders as many cookies. "We don't sell 'sorry, we're out,'" Chris Andino says. "We work very hard to get the customer what he or she wants."

The Andinos also work hard to promote a good working environment, which also isn't commonplace in the fast food and sandwich shop industry. While the couple says they can't pay their staff of eight too much over minimum wage, they do make daily, conscious efforts to do two other things: Praise and empower.

That approach is a lesson both Andinos learned while working in supervisory and management positions for West Des Moines-based grocery chain Hy-Vee, Inc. The praise part, the Andinos say, is easy.

The empowering people to make their own decisions part, on say food stocking issues or customer complaints, is a trickier balance. Says Chris Andino: "We don't have such a large business that we can let them fail too much."

The final part of the Triple-C recipe - cleanliness - is something both the Andinos and the staff work on continuously, both in the food prep areas and the dining room.

'The American dream'

So far, the Andinos have proven that these customer-centric business principles can work, even in a slumping economy. The couple says their biggest challenge now is to sustain the growth, especially if the Gulf Coast economy continues to falter.

It's a challenge Chris Andino never thought about while growing up in Honduras. But soon after arriving in America, Andino developed his sense of immigrant-style optimism, something he plans on utilizing if things turn sour at his Subway. "Things are difficult for everybody now," Andino says of the current economy. "But we don't wake up in the morning and say 'life is difficult.'"

Besides, few things are as difficult as coming to America with just $100 and not speaking the language. After finding his way to Iowa, Andino's assimilation process was given a boost through a chance meeting with Karl Leib, a professor and official with the University of Iowa.

Andino lived with Leib and his wife for a few years and in addition to taking college classes, he advanced his English speaking skills two ways: By watching cartoons and by following a Leib rule that when he was in the house, he wasn't allowed to speak anything but English.

A few years later, Chris Andino met his future wife, when they both worked for Hy-Vee. Keri Andino worked in marketing and Chris Andino worked in just about everything else, eventually earning a promotion to store manager.

Seeking a more meaningful life after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the couple retired from the company in late 2001 to begin another life odyssey. First, the Andinos bought an RV and along with their then five-year-old daughter and their Golden Retriever traveled across the country, stopping in 37 states. One of their favorite stops was at Sun-N-Fun, an RV resort community on Fruitville Road in Sarasota.

But before moving to Florida, the Andinos spent a year in Honduras helping rebuild homes on the northern coast of the country that were destroyed when Hurricane Mitch walloped the country in 1998.

Once back in the States, the couple decided to move to Bradenton. And the decision to buy a Subway, based partially on the fact they ate at one four or five times a week, soon followed.

Says Keri Andino: "We are living the American dream."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business: Subway, Ellenton

Industry. Franchising, fast food

Key. The new Subway storeowners have increased sales by 20% in five months.