UPDATE, November 19, 2024: Private equity firm Blackstone announced it reached an agreement with Jersey Mike’s owner Peter Cancro to acquire a majority of the sandwich chain. The deal is reported to value Jersey Mike’s at $8 billion including debt. Cancro, who will stay on as Jersey Mike's CEO, is retaining a minority stake in the company, according to Blackstone’s announcement. Forbes has not yet been able to confirm Cancro’s exact stake moving forward.

“We believe we are still in the early innings of Jersey Mike’s growth story and that Blackstone is the right partner to help us reach even greater heights,” Cancro said in a press release about the deal. “Blackstone has helped drive the success of some of the most iconic franchise businesses globally and we look forward to working with them to help make significant new investments going forward.”

Peter Cancro rolls up the sleeves of his blue Brooks Brothers oxford and steps into the first position on the sandwich assembly line. With a practiced flick of the wrist, the 67-year-old owner and CEO of Jersey Mike’s zips a knife clean through a freshly baked 15-inch loaf. To his right, an employee in a navy apron works a block of pink meat against a slicer. They’re making the Cancro Special, a layer of provolone topped with a towering pile of roast beef and pepperoni, sprinkled with shredded lettuce and tomato, then slathered with the chain’s signature mix of oil, vinegar and oregano. Every sub at Jersey Mike’s is made this way: fresh, in front of customers, with high-quality meat sliced or grilled to order. “You go around the country and nobody is doing this,” Cancro boasts as he neatly wraps his lunch in parchment.

Jamel Toppin for Forbes

Cancro has been making sandwiches at this Point Pleasant sub shop on the Jersey Shore since 1971, when he was 14. This is the original Jersey Mike’s, tucked away on a small side street behind an unassuming brown brick façade. The store, which opened in 1956, is now a training hub where Cancro and his team teach newly minted franchisees how to operate their stores like quality mom-and-pop delis. Trainees even take a class on New Jersey history. “People see us as the local sub shop. They don’t consider us a chain,” says Cancro, who insists his high-touch approach is the secret sauce that has helped turn Jersey Mike’s into one of the nation’s fastest-growing fast-food brands, on track to hit nearly $4 billion in systemwide revenue this year from 3,000 locations (99% of them franchisees). It’s also made Cancro a super-sized fortune. Including both the value of the business and his share of dividends paid out over the years, Jersey Mike’s sole owner is worth an estimated $5.6 billion. That’s more than Mark Cuban or Steven Spielberg, and twice as much as Jimmy John’s founder Jimmy John Liautaud. “Peter Cancro’s Jersey Mike’s brand is spectacular,” says the rival sandwich billionaire, who sold out to Inspire Brands, a subsidiary of private equity firm Roark Capital, in 2019, at which point he stepped down as chairman of Jimmy John’s. “He’s blown past me.”

Beach Buns: In the early days, Mike’s Subs sold up to 1,300 loaves of bread a day during the hot summer months on the Jersey Shore. In the winter, they’d be lucky to move 500. “I’d call my sister, Cathy, and say, ‘I think I’m going to sell and go back to college,’ ” Peter Cancro recalls. “But only for a brief moment.”

Over the past five years, Jersey Mike’s has averaged annual sales growth of 20.2%, according to food service consulting firm Technomic, with revenue jumping from $1.3 billion in 2019 to $3.3 billion in 2023. Only four other U.S. food chains have grown faster: Mediterranean fast-casual eatery Cava, chicken outfit Raising Cane’s and a pair of drive-through coffee sellers, Scooter’s and Dutch Bros. Jim Salera, a food-and-beverage analyst with investment banking firm Stephens, says Jersey Mike’s and several of these others all benefit from the same trend: the rise of an “affordable luxury” class of fast food. “What [customers] are looking for is the intersection of quality and price,” Salera says. He adds that the typical Jersey Mike’s customer is likely to be higher-income than those who go to McDonald’s and Burger King. Which is why Jersey Mike’s stores can charge as much as $19 for their biggest subs and still bring in an average of nearly $160,000 in net profit a year, according to Forbes’ estimates.

Cancro is riding the momentum, planning to open another 5,000 stores in the next five years, and 300 in Canada in the next decade. The goal is to have more than 10,000 stores (Subway would still have about twice as many in the U.S.). Cancro is backing the expansion with an aggressive advertising push, spending nearly........

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