Joanne Davenport has always wanted to own a restaurant.
Her wish came true recently with the opening earlier this month of the new Subway sandwich shop in town.
“I always wanted to work in food service,” Davenport said. “I'd never really worked in it very much, other than part time at a small restaurant, just to see what it was like.
“We just got into it. You meet a nice variety of people.”
The Davenports, Joanne and her husband, Gabe, started serving Nov. 1 in what she called a “soft opening,” kind of a shake-down before the official grand opening, which will probably be next month, she said.
“We didn't really announce it,” she said. “We wanted to do the soft opening just to get our act together before we got swamped. We wanted to be sure we could serve our customers.”
It's been a two-year process to get the restaurant up and running, Joanne Davenport said. The couple had to find the land and get the building up. But before any of that could happen, they had to apply for a franchise from the Subway Company, based in Milford, Conn.
Once an application is made, a site committee from the corporate office comes to town to look everything over, to make sure a Subway would succeed. Once the site is approved, the paperwork and the training begin, Davenport said.
The Girard Subway is one of only a handful in the state of Kansas that are independently owned. The bulk of the stores in the state are owned by a Minnesota holding company, Davenport said.
Once the site was approved, Davenport began her training to be a Subway owner. She started about a year ago with a Safe-Serve Course, where she learned about keeping the store clean and how to prevent food-borne illness. As the opening day got closer, she spent two weeks in intensive owner's training at the company's corporate office in Connecticut, learning the ins and outs of all the paperwork, financial and record keeping end of the business. Then, the company sent her to a Subway shop in Hartford, Conn., where she worked behind the counter for 40 hours to learn the customer service side of the coin.
“They put you on the line and you learn how to do everything,” she said. “They want you to understand the ground-floor workings of the store.”
The company supplies all the fixtures and equipment that go in to one of its restaurants — everything from the refrigeration equipment that keeps the food fresh and the ovens used to bake the bread to the wallpaper, lighting fixtures and floor tiles.
“It all comes on one big truck,” Davenport said. “All the equipment comes in on one semi, it's consolidated out of a warehouse in Sedalia Mo.
“They just deliver it. We had to unload it. We had a lot of people come in to help us unload it.”
The unofficial opening went pretty much as anticipated, Davenport said. There were only one or two little surprises.
“The biggest surprise after we opened was the volume of business,” she said. “We immediately found out we needed more staff. We were totally overworked.
“We were really stressed trying to get everything done. We were not prepared for the volume. But we are now.
Davenport said she liked the idea of a Subway restaurant because it would give the residents of Girard another dining options. Particularly for people who are in a hurry who still want a more health-conscious option. There's no fried foods on a Subway menu, for example, and fresh vegetables and lower-calorie, lower-fat foods are almost become the norm for the restaurant.
And getting the Subway company to look seriously at Girard for a restaurant wasn't that tough a battle. The company had had it's eye on the community for some time. The location near the high school/middle school facility on St. John Street can only help the business be successful, she said, offering additional options for partnerships between the business, school and community.
“They'd wanted to come to Girard for a long time,” she said. “They just didn't have anybody that was interested in putting one here.
“When somebody applied and wanted to put one here, they were very excited. There will be several opportunities to work with the school and the community in several different ways.”