During the past decade, Jersey Mike’s grew from a franchise with fewer than a handful of Southwest Florida locations to one with more than a dozen. The growth has yet to even reach its peak.
Jersey Mike’s has boosted its presence across the region over the last five years, growing from five to 14 locations in Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties. Over the next two years, at least eight more are planned.
“We’ve been growing across the country,” said Hoyt Jones, president of Jersey Mike’s franchise systems. “It’s not unique to just Florida. We built 308 stores across the U.S. last year. We might do something similar this year – 320 to 325 new stores. We have about 1,100 stores that are under contract to be built across the country.”
Bonita Springs, Cape Coral and southern Collier County each received new Jersey Mike’s locations in recent months as the brand continues to expand with a new, national advertising campaign led by actor Danny DeVito.
“One of the tipping points was probably about 10 years ago,” Jones said. “That’s when we had enough stores in the New York area, Chicago, [Los Angeles] and Dallas. When you start to do national TV ads, that’s when you start to get exposure to markets that don’t have stores. It opens up the market. There’s a little pent-up demand. We’ve attracted some really strong franchise owners.”
There are about 2,550 Jersey Mike’s locations across the country with about 600 different franchise owners. The price tag for a franchise location is between $450,000 and $500,000.
“We treat every store that we’re opening like the first store we’ve ever opened,” Jones said. “It’s a big investment for somebody.”
Joe Davidson, the operating partner of two Naples area locations, has a third being planned over the next year for Marco Island, which would be the island’s first. Once known as Jersey Joe during his 25 years as a New Jersey disc jockey, Davidson grew up around the Jersey Mike’s brand and was childhood friends with some of the company’s future executives.
“Interesting story,” Davidson said. “When there were only three Jersey Mike’s, I was over in New Jersey. I was probably 18 or 19 years old. I started working for the franchise. Everybody in the company now were the guys working on the line with me.”
In August of last year, Davidson opened his first Naples area store, at 6845 Collier Blvd., Unit 105. On March 22, he opened the region’s newest, at 9985 Business Circle S., Unit 6, in East Naples.
“You look for real estate, you look for the high-traffic areas and where the rooftops and businesses are,” Davidson said. “A lot of research was done to set us up for success. There’s a lot of growth out there. Everything has been built up. The growth is all going east. There’s a lot of rooftops going up. There’s a lot of apartment units and condo units.
“Four developments are being built right now. Those are future clients. We want to get them into the store and feed them. We hope to make them regulars.”
