While my buddy Art helped me get the shop ready for opening day, my mom helped me line up the various vendors who would provide the bread, paper goods, meats, vegetables, and cheeses that we would need. Without anyone to guide us in these matters we consulted the local Yellow Pages and my mom and I were sort of like the blind leading the blind. With a name and an address in hand, off we’d go to tell our story to any vendor who would listen. I’m sure these vendors had never witnessed anything quite like it before. A pretty, little Italian woman and her lanky teenage son show up with plans to open a sandwich shop so he can afford to go to college. They say their goal is to open thirty-two restaurants in ten years! It’s not a story they heard every day.
We must have been a convincing pair, however, because no one turned us away. I am sure they took me more seriously because mom was with me, but the process was fairly simple. I think it’s the type of thing that anyone could have done in almost any community. In nearly every town there are suppliers and most, if not all, of them need more customers. And even if mom and I seemed a bit unusual, and our business a bit risky, the suppliers were willing to work with us. We registered our most complicated request at the bakery. We wanted our rolls custom-made. But the baker said even that wasn’t a problem. Everything was cut-and-dry. After all, what’s to buying vegetables, meats, cheeses, or paper products? The suppliers simply sold us what they had in stock.
Of course, we had absolutely no purchasing power, but we never worried about it, either. We simply had to pay high prices for whatever we needed to buy, but any small business faces a similar predicament. There wasn’t anything we could do about it. However, the vendors didn’t require payment in advance. They gave us credit on the spot! We could have shopped around and looked for better deals, but that would require more time. It was more important to line up what we needed, buy it, and figure out how to get it cheaper at a later time.
Now that I wasn’t working at the hardware store, I had no income, so time was a major issue. Every day that our restaurant was closed I was losing money, and so was the business. There was not only the cost of ongoing rent and utilities, but also the lost opportunity. If the restaurant wasn’t open, we couldn’t sell anything. If the restaurant wasn’t selling anything, I couldn’t get paid. My singular focus was to get the restaurant open.
Of course, the location couldn’t open without equipment, so while my mom helped me find suppliers, my dad helped me scour the newspaper classifieds every day for used equipment. We needed a cash register, a refrigeration unit, a commercial sink, a meat slicer, and some countertops and shelves. We found it all, even on our shoestring budget. Most of it was obsolete, but it was functional and it lasted for many years. My most unusual purchase was a big, brass cash register. When we pressed the number keys, two or three of them simultaneously, the price popped up with a “cha-ching” in the top of the cash register, and the drawer opened automatically. It was so old that the highest dollar amount it could ring up was $2.99. That wasn’t a problem, though, because our highest-priced sandwich was 69 cents. For the purpose of collecting money and making change, that piece of junk was all we needed.
Opening Day
On Saturday morning, Art Witkowski and I had no idea what to expect when we opened at nine to prepare for customers. One of us cut up the vegetables: onions, tomatoes, green peppers, and even olives, while the other sliced the ham, cheese, and salami, a half pound of each. A half pound seemed right to me because that’s the amount mom would ask me to buy when she sent me to the store for our family.
By 9:30 we were ready for business and patiently waiting when a young neighborhood girl rode up on her bicycle. We smiled as she walked in and ordered the first sandwich. This was a critical moment in the history of Pete’s Super Submarines, but not for the obvious reason.
Yes, it was our first sale, but now I had to teach Art how to make a submarine sandwich. Even though I planned to go into the sub business, and I traveled to Portland to watch Amato’s, and I rented and built the store bought the food and equipment, I had yet to make a single sandwich. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Within an hour I had to leave Art in charge of the restaurant. Coincidentally to our opening day, the University of Bridgeport scheduled an English capability exam at 11:00 a.m. for entering freshmen. I had to take the test, and that meant I had to leave Art alone in the restaurant for a couple of hours. Pete, his wife, and my parents planned to help out later in the day, but until they arrived, or I returned, Art would have to handle things on his own. That meant he had to know how to make sandwiches.
Actually, making sandwiches didn’t seem to be too difficult. By the time we had left Maine a few weekends earlier, we had thoroughly discussed the details of how to make our sandwiches. We talked about how to cut the bread, how to layer the meat and cheese, the vegetables, the oil, and the seasonings. As Art watched me that morning, he didn’t think it was much of a challenge, either. Good thing, because our first customer was our last customer before I left the restaurant. Art was on his own with one sandwich worth of training.
At approximately 12:20 p.m., the English exam now a successful but distant memory, I returned to our restaurant parking lot and it was packed. As I glanced over at the shop I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only were customers crammed inside, they were standing in line outside! It was the noontime rush, and all I could figure was that a lot of people had come to the restaurant, or the service was very slow. As it turned out, it was a little of both.
Walking across the parking lot I spotted my partner. “How you doing, Pete?” I said with a measure of excitement in my voice. I noticed he was carrying a brown bag. “What do you have?” I asked.
“Knives,” he responded. Pete had arrived earlier and discovered that we only had one knife for slicing vegetables and making sandwiches. “We can’t serve all of these people with just one knife.”
Having worked at a hardware store I knew there were many types of knives, all priced differently, some cheaper than others. Pete had purchased two knives at $3 each and I cringed. That was going to put a crimp in our budget, but there was no time to do anything about it. We rushed into the restaurant and went to work, furiously taking care of customers.
Since we didn’t know anything about establishing an operational system, we didn’t have one that first day, or for many weeks thereafter. Consequently, we had a continuous line of customers and we were behind the eight ball. It didn’t help matters that our tiny shop was designed as a one- or two-person operation and there were now six people working in it: Pete, his wife, my parents, Art, and myself. As best we could, we each found a place to work. Art had transferred his masterful sandwich making training to the others, so they were busy behind the sandwich counter. I walked to the back room where we had several bushel baskets of green peppers. I turned over one empty basket for a place to sit and used two full baskets to support a piece of plywood that served as a table where I could cut vegetables. Then I went to work replenishing the vegetable supply at the counter.
The line out front never gave out and every so often I took a curiosity break to see who was in the restaurant. Occasionally a friend came out of the line to congratulate me, and I immediately took advantage of the opportunity. “Let me give you a tour,” I’d say. Then I’d proceed to explain, “This is the counter we built. Here is the cash register. Over here is the partition we built to hide the back room, and”—pointing now to my makeshift work station—“here’s where I’m cutting vegetables. Why don’t you have a seat here and help cut some vegetables?” I recruited five more people out of the line to help us that day.
By 5:30 in the afternoon mom told me we were nearly out of food. We had sold almost all of the rolls, twenty-five dozen, and we were low on meat and cheese. So I ran out to an Italian deli to buy more supplies. It was late in the day, however, and I returned with only another dozen rolls. Within an hour, we ran out of food, but fortunately, we also ran out