STOCKHOLM: The self-made billionaire who heads up sandwich maker Subway, now the world's largest fast food chain in terms of restaurants, never thought his operation would become bigger than McDonald's.
"It was just a way to pay my way through college," Fred DeLuca, who started his business at age 17, told AFP at a newly opened restaurant in Stockholm on Thursday.
"But we did have a goal," he added, explaining that he and associate Peter Buck, who lent him 1,000 dollars to open his first store in 1965, aimed to open 32 Subways over the next 10 years. Today, "to have 1,000 times as many is unbelievable," said DeLuca, who with his slight tan and crisp white shirt under a black jumper looks younger than his 63 years. Subway, it emerged this week, has seen its number of restaurants balloon to 33,749 across the globe as of January 1, making it the world's largest fast food chain ahead of McDonald, with 32,737 restaurants. DeLuca said the company, which tracks store numbers, found out "last summer that we were larger than McDonald's" but admitted with a chuckle that company executives still "found it very exciting that it was in the newspapers." The son of a high school dropout, DeLuca first launched his sandwich chain in Connecticut, in the northestern United States, but now lives in Florida, saying he has a regular booth at the Subway near his home. His chain, which allows guests to customise their own sandwich with fresh vegetables and other ingredients, grew quickly by tapping into the increasing demand for healthier fast food options. But DeLuca said branding the company as "fresh" was not his idea from the start.
"We never thought of ourselves as healthy food or we never thought a lot about this 'Eat Fresh' jargon," he said, referring to the company's current slogan. The idea, he said, came from consumer research groups. Subway's core business is the same as it was "45 years ago, the footlong submarine sandwich," he stressed. Nor did he avoid his competitor, DeLuca added, giving the details of a recent visit to McDonalds'(he chose an ice coffee and yoghurt parfait.) "I like McDonald's, you have to do your competitive analysis," he said, speaking without public relations assistant and joking his next stop in Sweden would be wherever his team told him to go. The hamburger chain had in fact been beneficial for his sandwich shops, he added.
"We've been big beneficiaries of McDonald's. I would say if McDonald's never existed, we would have had fewer stores than we currently have. They've gone to so many places and gotten people into the habit of going out to eat on a regular basis and that opens the door for us to grow," he pointed out. But his own chain, where he eats four to five times a week, most often opting for a turkey sandwich, remained his favorite.
"Today, I had a B.M.T. (one of the chain's popular sandwiches, it stands for biggest, meatiest, tastiest) and it was good, very good, but I normally eat turkey." Subway, whose shops are now almost exclusively operated by independent franchise owners, certainly enabled DeLuca to pay for his college psychology degree, and then some. According to the Forbes magazine 2011 list of billionaires published on Thursday, DeLuca is the 692th richest billionaire worldwide and the 241th richest man in the United States, with a net worth of 1.8 billion dollars.
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