Quiznos Expanding With 30 New Restaurants

[storewanderer]

There used to be stand-alone Quiznos, but the buildings tended to be pretty old (never purpose-built) and I can't think of any examples off-hand that still exist.

Carl's Jr. made a big splash in 2009 in Texas with new stores, and early stores even had the Green Burrito co-brand. By the end of 2020, nearly all of them had closed (there's still on Georgetown and the truck stop co-brands still exist). The one time I tried it I waited a long time for a hamburger...then again, Whataburger tends to have poor service and they're one of the most popular places around.

Carl's Jr. screwed up in TX by opening new units in Dallas/Houston initially as corporate operated units. At the time the Carl's Jr. corporate operated program ran very strong stores. Their pricing was "in line" (they were competitive with McDonalds at their corporate units), they had long hours, and were well staffed in the corporate units. Then the company went into a refranchising program a few years after the openings in TX; the stores were not performing particularly well anyway, but since it was a growth market, they were able to package them up as nearly new stores in a hot growing market and find some franchise group to take the markets over. The stores were taken over by franchisees and you know the rest of the story. Prices get increased, labor gets cut, operations that were just being built up to have customer loyalty fell drastically downhill, and of course the locations didn't last long.

The truck stop units are under a different sort of agreement as they are non-traditional units. Love's is typically running those sites. They are about the only party doing much of any growth at this point with the Carl's Jr./Hardees brands. Those sites aren't impacted by the franchisee failure. As long as the sites perform, Love's will keep them going even as the only units for hundreds of miles.

Back to the Quiznos topic, most of the ones I saw were strip malls and new construction units were usually those little parking lot type strips near or shared by a Starbucks since at the time the two chains were building out heavily.

I am not sure how the attempted revival of Quiznos is going. The original store in Denver closed or is about to close, it was corporate and refranchised a couple years ago (refranchising.............same old story)... but Quiznos never had many corporate units just those few around Denver.

[Bagels]

Back to the Quiznos topic, most of the ones I saw were strip malls and new construction units were usually those little parking lot type strips near or shared by a Starbucks since at the time the two chains were building out heavily.

I am not sure how the attempted revival of Quiznos is going. The original store in Denver closed or is about to close, it was corporate and refranchised a couple years ago (refranchising.............same old story)... but Quiznos never had many corporate units just those few around Denver.

The chain continues to shrink. Per Wikipedia, there's 176 domestic locations (and it's probably fewer than that). Locally, there's one remaining Quizno's in Orange County and five in Los Angeles County. Wow -- I can think of at least half-dozen locations that were within a 5-10 minute drive of me in the late 2000s...

Too bad. Quizno's always was my favorite.

[storewanderer]

I am pretty sure US unit count is closer to 100 at this point as there have been more closures in 2022...

The product is still really good if you can find it...

Pricing is all over the place but there is a daily special at around $7.45 (should be the regular price but it is like $3 off).

Also the new unit in Hobbs, NM is "temporarily closed" - stuck in the same limbo as multiple of the Denver sites that seem to have closed recently due to some issues with some franchisee.

[Romr123]

Four left in Michigan and a campus location. The 4 locations appear to be two different franchisees (they're 2 and 2 in different parts of the metro; one franchisee offers delivery in their 2 locations, other one doesn't).

[Bagels]

Playing with their website, they're down to two locations each in the Atlanta and Dallas areas. One in Chicagoland. None in the NYC area. The Denver-area has 5 locations, including one at the airport. Most of their locations appear to be in rural towns, airports & gas stations. The airport and gas stations locations are rapidly disappearing. I'm guessing that most of the rural locations are sole proprietorships in which the owners has invested his or her life savings.

I agree their product remains excellent, but I'm certain there's a handful of "gorilla" restaurants remaining that don't adhere to the chains' standards. These were pretty common in the mid-2010s, although new ownership chased a lot out.

[storewanderer]

Playing with their website, they're down to two locations each in the Atlanta and Dallas areas. One in Chicagoland. None in the NYC area. The Denver-area has 5 locations, including one at the airport. Most of their locations appear to be in rural towns, airports & gas stations. The airport and gas stations locations are rapidly disappearing. I'm guessing that most of the rural locations are sole proprietorships in which the owners has invested his or her life savings.

I agree their product remains excellent, but I'm certain there's a handful of "gorilla" restaurants remaining that don't adhere to the chains' standards. These were pretty common in the mid-2010s, although new ownership chased a lot out.

I think at this point the units left have to put out a good product. There is no way this last batch of units has made it this far without putting out a good product. There may be some fluke units that somehow are lousy and stay open but I think by now those have been shaken out and at this point the open units have to be doing something right to stay open for this long. But I have no idea how the Reno unit stays open; it has very few customers. I think the owner has some other businesses too, and he has a manager in the store who is really good, but I really wonder when it won't be worth keeping open any longer.

The few left in UT/NV/NorCal/WA are standard old suburb strip mall type locations.

There are a lot of Quiznos left around Vancouver, Canada.

[BillyGr]

Playing with their website, they're down to two locations each in the Atlanta and Dallas areas. One in Chicagoland. None in the NYC area. The Denver-area has 5 locations, including one at the airport. Most of their locations appear to be in rural towns, airports & gas stations. The airport and gas stations locations are rapidly disappearing. I'm guessing that most of the rural locations are sole proprietorships in which the owners has invested his or her life savings.

I agree their product remains excellent, but I'm certain there's a handful of "gorilla" restaurants remaining that don't adhere to the chains' standards. These were pretty common in the mid-2010s, although new ownership chased a lot out.

May also be that those rural locations are just areas without much else available, so they do better than others as people go there for lack of other options.

[storewanderer]

Playing with their website, they're down to two locations each in the Atlanta and Dallas areas. One in Chicagoland. None in the NYC area. The Denver-area has 5 locations, including one at the airport. Most of their locations appear to be in rural towns, airports & gas stations. The airport and gas stations locations are rapidly disappearing. I'm guessing that most of the rural locations are sole proprietorships in which the owners has invested his or her life savings.

I agree their product remains excellent, but I'm certain there's a handful of "gorilla" restaurants remaining that don't adhere to the chains' standards. These were pretty common in the mid-2010s, although new ownership chased a lot out.

May also be that those rural locations are just areas without much else available, so they do better than others as people go there for lack of other options.

Out west they aren't in rural locations so it is interesting how the composition of the remaining locations varies depending what part of the country you are looking at.

There was a time when these Quiznos were all over rural areas but if you blinked you'd miss them. I remember eating at locations in Mammoth Lakes, CA, Bishop, CA, and Alturas, CA 10-15 years ago. It really is a shame the franchisor was so crooked when it came to food cost to the franchisees because the product/concept was solid.

[BillyGr]

Playing with their website, they're down to two locations each in the Atlanta and Dallas areas. One in Chicagoland. None in the NYC area. The Denver-area has 5 locations, including one at the airport. Most of their locations appear to be in rural towns, airports & gas stations. The airport and gas stations locations are rapidly disappearing. I'm guessing that most of the rural locations are sole proprietorships in which the owners has invested his or her life savings.

I agree their product remains excellent, but I'm certain there's a handful of "gorilla" restaurants remaining that don't adhere to the chains' standards. These were pretty common in the mid-2010s, although new ownership chased a lot out.

May also be that those rural locations are just areas without much else available, so they do better than others as people go there for lack of other options.

Out west they aren't in rural locations so it is interesting how the composition of the remaining locations varies depending what part of the country you are looking at.

There was a time when these Quiznos were all over rural areas but if you blinked you'd miss them. I remember eating at locations in Mammoth Lakes, CA, Bishop, CA, and Alturas, CA 10-15 years ago. It really is a shame the franchisor was so crooked when it came to food cost to the franchisees because the product/concept was solid.

I was only going by the quoted post mentioning rural locations, since we have none of any type around here anymore.

[Bagels]

Out west they aren't in rural locations so it is interesting how the composition of the remaining locations varies depending what part of the country you are looking at.

There was a time when these Quiznos were all over rural areas but if you blinked you'd miss them. I remember eating at locations in Mammoth Lakes, CA, Bishop, CA, and Alturas, CA 10-15 years ago. It really is a shame the franchisor was so crooked when it came to food cost to the franchisees because the product/concept was solid.

Quiznos had higher food costs because it procured the best, highest quality ingredients and wanted to ensure that franchisees conformed to its business model. Its biggest problem was the quality of its franchisees -- it recruited them through unconventional means (direct mailing, even infomercials) and required only a $25,000 franchisee fee. Often, franchisees could put just $5,000 down and borrow the rest (including the build out of their restaurant) with a small business loan. It had no net worth requirement. This equated into rapid growth for the chain, but it also meant that many of its franchisees had no business owning one.

Owning a franchise still requires one to market and grow the business; it's common to lose money in initial years. This requires one to have the finances for the initial growing phase, the down years, etc. And most Quizno franchisees didn't have this -- a lot were looking to get rich quick as passive owners. Consider that when the recession hit and Subway - with its newly installed toaster ovens - started offering $5 Footlongs, the value proposition of Quiznos died. Quiznos responded by increasing its promotions -- which was the right move -- but franchisees balked and refused to participate.

In the 2000s, we ate at Quiznos regularly but frequently encounter resistance toward coupons. In Fall 2009, we had a BOGO any sandwich with purchase of two large fountain drinks. The cashier/ owner rang up our meal, we handed the coupon & our credit card, he cashed out our order... then returned our coupon, saying he didn't accept them. Our fault for not inquiring before the order, yes, but it was shady. $32 -- in 2009 dollars -- for two large steak sandwiches and two large fountain sodas. [He refused a refund, we complained to corporate, he called us & left a voicemail saying it was best if we never returned to his store. Ironically, he's still in business.] THAT's what effectively killed Quiznos -- extremely poor value proposition.

In 2006, the lion's share of Quiznos were doing over $400K in sales, with the mean around $450K. Those are pretty sold (2006) numbers for a sandwich chain.