Challenge Accepted: Firehouse 50

I wanted to share with you the story of why I camped outside of a Firehouse Subs for their grand opening. No, I wasn’t just really craving a sub that day; I was craving a year supply of free subs. I was at home, minding my own business with little in the way of plans for the evening when my friend Lauren called me up to alert me that Firehouse Subs was giving away free subs for a year to the first fifty customers at their newest location. She presented it as a mission, to be one of the first fifty in line, then after reconsideration, she issued it as a challenge, knowing my propensity to blurt out "Challenge accepted!" and indeed the challenge was accepted. Not only was I one of the first fifty, I was customer number one. We didn’t know how long it would take before others came and got in line, so we made the decision to camp out all night. We did it right. We brought a generator, a TV, DVD player, chairs, lots of blankets, and a cooler full of Monster energy drinks and Mountain Dew. While we waited we were greeted by several Firehouse employees. At first many of them seemed a bit shocked, or maybe thought we were insane for showing up 17 hours early. Don Fox, the CEO came out to introduce himself and shake my hand, and after we had set up our makeshift campground in front of their store Robin Sorensen came out and talked to us for a while, sharing the story of how him and his brother Chris used to be part of every opening for their first twenty or so locations. He told us all about their first location, and how it closed earlier that day to be moved to this new location, and how he and his brother were its last customers. We also learned that the same artist has painted the mural in every Firehouse subs location. He kept us entertained for a while, invited us in for drinks, and as all of the staff left for the night they brought us a pizza to hold us over for the night.

The next morning we realized that we just might be a little crazy. There were more than twelve hours between the time we had shown up, and the time the first person not in our group showed up. We had jumped the gun a bit, but it didn’t matter. We had a good time anyway. We watched a few movies (AVENGERS FOR THE WIN!), complained to each other about the cold, contemplated what subs we would try first with our free subs, and waited on the sun to come out and warm us up. When the doors finally opened we were handed our stacks of free sub coupons and to the registers we went and I had the honor of being the first customer at the new flagship location. I didn’t use one of my free sub cards right then, I pocketed them and ordered a large Hook & Ladder combo. Maybe it was the wait, maybe it was being inside the warm store finally, or maybe it was because it was the first time I tried something other than their Italian sub, But that Hook & Ladder was extra delicious that morning. Since that day I’ve had more subs than I can keep up with. Free subs are a blessing when you’ve been laid off. I’ve of course taken care of family's purchases on Firehouse visits, and that large stack of free subs has dwindled faster than I’d like to admit. At the rate I am going, my year supply of subs is going to translate into the remainder of 2012 as opposed to the 365 day year that they were intended. It’s been a delicious month though, and I’ll definitely be at the next grand opening that they do this for. So thank you Robin, Chris, Don, and all the other nice people at Firehouse whose names I never caught. Keep me posted on when you do this again.