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.
