That first year, the shop had $155,000 in sales and $40,000 in profit. His father, James, owned 48 percent of the business at the onset, while Jimmy owned 52 percent. Liautaud marketed his sandwiches from that first store by bringing samples door-to-door at dorms. “But I realized I was an anomaly as opposed to the norm, you know?” “I assumed when I was first selling the franchises that everyone would be as excited as I was to wake up in the morning to bake bread and slice vegetables,” Liautaud said. The air pumps back in his lungs and the intensity returns in his eyes when he talks about his business: The school of hard knocks, mixed with a crazy passion that few franchisees can match. Jimmy John Liautaud, founder and CEO of Jimmy John’s sandwich shops, who built his business (and sandwiches) with a mix of passion, irreverence and determination. And the meat has been eaten, if not by me than by someone I’m with. “Everything I’ve done has been totally legal. “I choose to hunt, and I choose to fish,” he said. Just asking him about it makes his eyes well up with tears. “I’ve been around for 32 years and nobody knows who we are,” he said.Īn avid hunter, Liautaud acknowledges the biggest misconception about him is that people still connect him to 10-year-old photos of him posing with elephants, rhinos and other endangered animals he shot, photos that have prompted calls for boycotts in recent years. The plans, and the hiring of a new public relations agency, led the executive to sit down for a rare interview earlier this month in his mother’s high-rise penthouse condo in downtown Chicago. He also wants to add international stores and may take the company public. Today, that business has 2,300 locations nationwide and Liautaud hopes to double that in five years. He enrolled at Eastern Illinois University there, only to drop out before finishing the first semester to grow his business. It’s a philosophy that has served him well since he took a $25,000 loan from his father in 1983 to open his first sandwich shop in the downstate Illinois city of Charleston after high school. CHICAGO – Jimmy John Liautaud, the founder of the sandwich chain bearing his name, is a passionate salesman of a simple philosophy: Work hard.

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