“Well, when I wrote the payroll checks, the bank balance went down.” Within months of his grand opening, he began to stagger the arrival times of employees in 15-minute increments rather than have them all arrive at once, saving a few dollars each shift. “I watched what makes the bank balance go up and what makes it go down,” he says. (Virtually all Jimmy John’s stores still deliver, typically for a flat fee of $2.) He worked 18-hour days and learned basic finance on the fly. To increase his customer base, Liautaud targeted college students and personally delivered to their dorms, charging 25 cents a sandwich. He and his dad split ownership, 52% and 48%, respectively. The first Jimmy John’s store opened among a cluster of bars near Eastern Illinois University in 1983, the day after Liautaud’s 19th birthday. At first Liautaud considered a hot dog stand, but the equipment was too expensive, so he opted for a sub shop set up in a converted garage. ![]() He gave his son $25,000 as seed money to start a business, on the condition that he would join the Army if it didn’t take off within a year. “I graduated second-to-last in my class in high school, and I was a fat kid.” By the time he graduated, Liautaud’s father had found success with a plastics-molding firm. ![]() “My early years in life were an utter failure,” he says.
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