After developing more than 100 Subway sandwich shops in the Cleveland area, Ghazi Faddoul was starting to run out of spots for new restaurants.
Then, in May, Mr. Faddoul opened a Subway inside the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, a recreational and cultural facility that offers yoga classes and preschool.
To locate there, he had to make the menu kosher, which meant removing ham and bacon, replacing the cheese with a soy-based substitute and keeping an Orthodox Jew on hand at all times to supervise food preparation. In observance of the Jewish Sabbath, he closes the restaurant early on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.
Mr. Faddoul, a Lebanese Christian, is now part owner of what Subway officials say is the 1st and only kosher Subway anywhere. ‘I look at this location in particular as a new market for Subway,’ says Mr. Faddoul. ‘Those are customers that never went to a Subway.’
To maintain its rapid growth as strip malls and spots alongside the freeway fill up with fast-food outlets, Subway restaurants is increasingly moving into locations where rivals have feared - or neglected - to tread. In the past several years, Subway has opened inside a church in upstate New York, a handful of coin-operated laundries in California, a Goodwill Industries store in South Carolina, a car dealership in Germany and an appliance store in Venezuela. It has more than 110 restaurants inside hospitals. Read more.
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