What We Need to Know About Fast Food Sandwich Chains

Jersey Mike’s has been in the news recently because it reputedly is pondering selling shares to the public through an IPO. Purchased during January 2025 by Blackstone in an $8 billion majority ownership deal, the chain has been around for approximately 70 years. At first it was a mom-and-pop Point Pleasant New Jersey deli, whose longtime CEO, Peter Cancro, started there when he was 14. Only 17, with a loan from a coach who was also a banker, Cancro bought Mike’s. Twelve years later, in 1987, the franchising began, and the rest of the story is history.

There really was a Mike:

But where are we going? To ranking and sandwiches.

Jersey Mike’s Growth

As our third largest fast food sandwich chain, Jersey Mike’s had 3,227 restaurants in the U.S. at the end of 2025. During last year, there were 238 more Jersey Mike’s while in 2024, they added 288. Among their restaurants, 3201 are franchisee owned; only 26 are corporate:

This ad takes us to now. For a smile, do take a look:

Ranking Criteria

While Jersey Mike’s is ranked #3 because of store growth, we could use a different lens. After all, one number as a metric is persuasive. However, whether looking at colleges or best dressed movie stars or GDP, ranking has to be totally subjective. It all depends on the variables you select, their weight, how you quantify them, your time frame and much more.

As for fast food sandwich chains, instead, we could have selected system wide sales (Subway), average unit volume (Jersey Mike’s), or brand value (Subway). And, to those we could add quality, loyalty, nutrition, accuracy speed, customer satisfaction.

Our Bottom Line: What is a Sandwich?

Of course, since we have been talking about fast food sandwiches, we better be sure we know what we mean.

Clarifying sandwich classification, the Cube Rule tells us that there are nine categories for foods with “starch.” Where a food belongs depends on where the “starch” is placed. If it is just under the food, then it’s “toast.” On the top and the bottom? A sandwich. On the right, left, and bottom? A taco.

You can judge the Cube Rule:

My sources and more: Thanks to Sherwood’s Chartr for inspiring today’s post and providing the basic facts. From there, we looked here, here and here for more detail. Then, for the firm’s history, we went to Jersey Mike’s and this Entrepreneur article. And finally, this podcast wonderfully shares more insight about ranking criteria.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in previous econlife posts.