Quotes from Fred DeLuca

I made the first sandwich before entering college.

By and large, we're a bread-eating culture. People like sandwiches. We don't really over-think that one.

The payroll tax is affecting sales. It's causing sales declines.

How you handle the obstacles has a big impact on how you do. If you give up, then you obviously don't get there, but if you're persistent, and you keep thinking of new ways to approach the business, you're more likely to reach your goal.

When I started in the business, the minimum wage was $1.25. I've seen an enormous number of wage increases. Basically, it applies evenly to everyone in the business.

If I were in charge of the government, I would index the minimum wage to inflation, so that way, everybody knows what they can count on.

When you're invested in your own business, you're going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they're going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's harder to get if headquarters is running things.

We have always had many more franchisee candidates than available locations.

I watch 'Shark Tank,' of course. It's very entertaining. I think it's actually good to help people think about the business they might start, and sometimes you get encouraged by looking at someone going into business and saying, 'Hey, I could do that.'

Profit or perish... There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs.

The people who come to work deserve to be paid properly, and there's no excuse. I could understand someone making a small error, but sometimes people make systematic errors, and that's not right.

You really have to understand this isn't a business where you sit in the back room and do calculations - you have to be very concerned about employees and customers, because that's really what's going to bring you success.

I tell everybody there are only three things that we do. We build sales at the store level, we build profits at the store level, and we build more stores. The first two things go in tandem, of course. It's pretty tough to build profits without sales.

You have to be able to communicate the vision to the people in your organization so that they know where and how they should direct themselves on a day-to-day basis.

I don't have much of a bucket list. I don't have a lot of needs and desires.

The United States is a huge market, and once you get rolling, you can replicate that model over and over pretty easily. Your supply lines are taken care of. You don't have technicians to deal with. You've got your customer base.

Everybody who goes through the business will make mistakes. The big question is how big will the mistakes be? How fast will they learn from the mistakes, and how quickly will they get the business in the correct direction?

In 1974, we began franchising. We didn't have any big thought process except that, 'OK, franchising will help us get to our goal of 32 stores and help us run stores farther away from home.'

We find that no matter what country we're in, if we hit the right economic notes and appeal to the mass market, we're able to build the business very, very rapidly.

We're very much in the people business in that there are two important groups you have to work with: customers and employees.

From my point of view, my job is just to work hard for our franchisees, so they can maintain the position they're in, and to grow market share.

For a franchise system to work well, you really need people with an entrepreneurial mind-set because, while you have a large, overarching system that everybody has to work with, a lot of local issues have to be handled.

To a large extent, we're working hard to fulfill the consumer demand for Subway sandwiches.

A lot of stuff happens daily when you're running a company like Subway. If you get too happy about some things or too unhappy about others, you get worn out. It's best if you can pace yourself a little bit more.