Jersey Mike’s: On A (Sandwich) Roll

Jersey Mike’s, a nationwide chain with nearly 3,000 locations across the United States, was recently acquired by Blackstone for $8 billion – one of the largest restaurant mergers and acquisitions in recent years.

We took a look at some of the location analytics to understand what is driving the chain’s success.

Jersey Mike’s Gets That Bread

Jersey Mike’s has been on a serious roll over the past few years. The chain, which operates as both a franchise and a company-owned business, has posted strong visitation numbers while its major expansion push has tripled its store count over the past decade.

Looking at the chain’s visits highlights just how well it is doing. In Q3 2024, Jersey Mike’s enjoyed year-over-year (YoY) visit growth of 2.6% – outpacing the overall fast-casual dining segment, which experienced a 2.4% decline during the same period.

Part of Jersey Mike’s success lies in its ability to grow its per-location average visit count, even as new locations open at a rapid clip. Analyzing the baseline change in visits highlights this growth – October 2024’s visits per location to Jersey Mike’s were 12.0.% higher than they were in January 2022, while visits grew by 44.4%.

Subs Find Success in the Suburbs 

Another factor driving Jersey Mike’s success may lie in the relative affluence of its customer base. Using the STI: PopStats dataset reveals that the chain tends to attract customers coming from trade areas where the median household income (HHI) was higher than the nationwide median – $83.7K compared to $76.1K. This suggests that Jersey Mike’s customers may be relatively resilient to rising prices, which may explain the chain’s rapid growth even during a period of consumer cut backs.

Further analysis of the psychographic data reveals that Jersey Mike’s is particularly popular among suburban visitors. According to the Spatial.ai: PersonaLive dataset, the chain’s captured market* over-indexes for a range of suburban segments – meaning that Jersey Mike’s attracts these audiences at higher rates than the national average. For example, “Wealthy Suburban Families” over-indexed by 43% compared to the nationwide average, “Upper Suburban Diverse Families” by 44%, “Blue Collar Suburbs” by 11%, and “Suburban Boomers” by 25%. 

Jersey Mike’s popularity with these segments bodes well for the chain’s future expansion plans given the continued rise and return to suburban living. 

*A chain’s captured market is obtained by weighting each census block group (CBG) in its trade area according to its share of visits to the chain in question – and thus represents the profile of the business’ actual visitor base.

Sub-Stantial Opportunities Ahead

Jersey Mike’s seems poised to continue building on its impressive upward trajectory. 

Will the sandwich chain  maintain its impressive momentum and keep up with, or outpace its fast-casual competitors?

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