The plan to open a Subway restaurant in the Buc-Mart has been cancelled.
Negotiations with Subway Corp. to get a franchise license failed for Aramark, the campus food service provider, after the owner of the local Subway franchise, John Franklin, objected to the proposal.
Franklin thought a Subway on campus would take part of his profits since his area encompasses ETSU.
“He felt it would be competition to him and it probably would,” said Don Cowles, director of Aramark.
Franklin said he got a letter from Subway in July saying a restaurant was going to open on the ETSU campus and if he had a problem with it to contact them. “I had lots of problems,” he said.
“The way I look at it, if there is going to be one on campus then it should be ours,” he said. “Our store on Walnut Street is only one-tenth of a mile from the ETSU campus. Without a doubt the campus store would hurt the store on Walnut Street.”
“I deal with a lot of competition,” Franklin said. “The hardest competition to deal with is another Subway.”
He said this is not the first time that ETSU has tried to open a Subway on campus. Shortly after Franklin opened the Walnut Street location in 1991 an attempt was made to open a Subway on-campus.
“They tried this back in 1992,” Franklin said “And it wasn’t fair because that store hadn’t been there long enough to build up a customer base. So they allowed my protest.”
During the last 10 years, Franklin said, he has tried to open a Subway on campus but has been turned down.
He said he would still like to open a Subway on campus if he could since a lot of business for the Walnut Street store comes from ETSU faculty, staff and students.
“I’d love to do it. I would start tomorrow if they would allow it,” he said. “I would be up there with a construction crew. All the school has to do is call me.”
Franklin is not angry with ETSU. He said does all he can to help the school, from catering for free to athletes to giving away scholarships.
“I know who my customers are and that’s why we give scholarships,” he said. “We try to work with the school as much as we can and try to help any organization on campus.”
Subway Corp. has since sent Aramark a letter saying that it will not grant permission for the company to open a new franchise, said Tony Warner, assistant vice president for the university center.
Cowles feels that it is more of an inconvenience than a real problem.
“It’s an embarrassing problem because corporate Subway indicated it wouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
Aramark received permission to place a Subway at the university soon after the renewal of their contract to provide food services for the campus in mid-August. The Buc-Mart re-opened before October with its new construction and the Subway was to already have been in place and serving the students.
Warner said that, although he didn’t know for sure, it was originally thought that Franklin would get a percentage of every sandwich sold at the campus Subway. However, Franklin said he was not aware of that and it would not work anyway.
“You don’t run a business that way. If they put one on campus I would not get one penny,” he said. “The only way that would happen is if we ran it.”
Both Cowles and Warner said they were disappointed about the situation, but it does not mean there will be no new restaurant in the Buc-Mart. Aramark has other franchises they can use. The choice, though, is up to students.
“We’re doing a survey to determine student preference,” Cowles said. “We want grass-roots information on what students want.”
The survey was conducted Monday and Tuesday in the Culp Center and gave students a choice of four possible restaurants to go in the Buc-Mart – Quizno’s, Blimpie Subs and Einstein Bros. Bagels as well as the Italian restaurant, Sbarro Pizza.
These are all vendors that Aramark currently has deals with and can place at any of the more than 400 schools they serve.
Quizno’s and Blimpie Subs are both local, familiar restaurants. Sbarro Pizza is a gourmet Italian eatery with a full line of Italian foods such as calzones, ziti, sausage rolls and pizza. Einstein Bros. Bagels is a deli that features bagel sandwiches, soups and salads as well as a breakfast menu.
Though the addition of a Subway to the campus will not happen Warner thinks it is not a big deal because of the back-up choices that are available. “I’m disappointed about the Subway, but I’m excited about these other options,” he said. “All four would be neat and would work well. What was important to us was student input.

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