Jimmy Johns Essay

Nick Kousky

1/12/2017

The History of Jimmy Johns

In 1983, history was made. The date, January 13, 1983 was a special time for all sandwich lovers around the globe. This date holds the place of the opening of the first ever Jimmy Johns. The legend himself Jimmy John Liautaud opened his first store in Charleston, IL right after being the second to last graduating from high school with his class. Liautaud was given a $25,000 loan from his from his father to start a business after realizing college wasn't for him.

Liautaud’s father was a huge fan of the military, Liautaud’s two brothers have served so of course his father wanted him to go too. Instead his father made a bet with him, that if Liautaud didn't make any profit within the

After learning that he purchased the deli products and came up with the first ever menu with only four sandwiches! Since Liautaud had two cousins in Charleston, so he decided to make that his first location. He found a closed down pizza joint that was surrounded by bars with also the Eastern Illinois University nearby, Liautaud says, “The location was surrounded by bars. Perfect! Students drink, they get hungry, I’d stay open late, and I would feed them. Boom!” He had a perfect plan! His partner in the business was of course his father. Liautaud owned 52% of the business and his father owned 48%. It would seem that Liautaud won that bet. Their first year they earned $155,000 and made a $40,000 profit. Take that Papa Jimmy

A change was made at this time because 70 stores were failing. That year he stopped selling franchises and the President and Liautaud wnet to try to turn around the failing stores. Liautaud explained,

“They weren’t following my system and weren’t committed to the restaurant lifestyle. It took 18 months, we turned around 63 of them and closed 7. I learned a lot from that experience so I changed the rules for allowing people to buy into my system as a franchisee. I explained in detail how tough running a Jimmy John’s can be. I explained the long hours, the unforgiving weather, the late nights, the weekends, and all of the sacrifices that go along with the industry. I made it tough for people to get into the system.”

In conclusion Liautaud said that he had never expected the business to grow so large.

He developed a system where as he puts it, “It makes me feel good that I developed a system where people can grow, develop valuable skills and learn to lead. This system teaches people to be proactive, to budget and to save their money”. That was a brief history of the one of the greatest sandwich franchises in the world Jimmy John’s “Freaky