THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, January 11, 2019 Page 9 ASKS | from page 4 keep coming back. That same quality product. Rich: If it was up to us, we would have stuck with the 10 items on the menu – but while times change, you have to branch out into wraps and salads and side orders. You have to keep up with the demand. Q: So, Rob, what’s the most popular sandwich on your menu? What’s the top dog? Rob: I think it’s the Italian cold cut. Rich: By far, the most favorite is our Italian. We’ve made it the same way with the same meats and the same bread since we began. Q: What’s the busiest day of the year? Rich: The day we announced we were closing. Q: I meant the busiest regular day. Rob: It’s Christmas Eve, because on Christmas Eve we have a lot of parties and we have a lot of catering, plus doing the regular business, and Rich’s wife, Joy, does all of the catering, and without her, we couldn’t do what we do. And she deserves to be in there as one of the key ingredients in our success. Rich: She started when she was 15. I didn’t marry her until she was 25. Q: So, she was here before she really knew you. Rich: Right. That’s where we met. She started here as a high school kid and she moved up. She went to Newbury College and got a degree in culinary. She does all the hot food. … But while she’s busy with the platters and all the catering, the store is very busy that day as well, because nobody is cooking – they’re out shopping. Q: When you look back – and I’m going to ask each of you guys again – what would be the most memorable moment for you? Did you have a celebrity here or something funny? Rich: Really, I just can’t get past the amount of people who have come to us recently and retold the stories of the past: the times that they’ve been here and how they have cherished that as a family. I’m just so proud that we carried that tradition on. I think it’s just the last couple of days that we’ve really seen the outpouring of customers and employees that don’t want to see us go. Q: Rob, what’s your most memorable moment? Rob: We’ve been here a long time and both of us worked in our old store over where Walgreens is. When we decided we were going to move into this new building here, we closed up at 10:00 on a Wednesday night. We were wheeling all of the equipment over from across the street – pizza ovens and slicers – we were carrying them across and bringing all of our cold cuts and everything, and we got it all in here that night and opened up the next morning. And we started a new business here the very next day. We didn’t take a day off. We closed there Wednesday and opened here Thursday. We didn’t have a phone line here yet, and we sat my sister in the vacant building to answer the phone, take orders and then come over and tell us. Q: Let me ask you, Rich, how many hours a week do you average? Rich: We’re probably down to 50 or 60 now. We were up there at 70 to 80, because once we took over, we were there day and night. Rob: When we were younger, we could do that [70 to 80 hours a week]. When we moved into this store, we started getting some night managers. Once we found a couple of people that we thought we could leave in charge, we started to cut it down so we didn’t have to do any more night shifts. We opened up in 1991 in this store, and here we are today in 2019, and we’re tired and we’re looking forward to retiring and being able to do things that we never had a chance to do, because this was an everyday thing. Q: When did you decide you were going to retire? Rich: It’s been about a year that we made the decision, but something we’ve thought about for about four years, and finally, last year, we decided we’ve got to set a date, because we don’t have another generation. Rob doesn’t have kids. I don’t have kids. So, our mind was kind of made up. We had no one to pass it on to, so we wanted to take our name and ride off into the sunset. Q: How will you spend your retirement, Rich? Rich: Between summers up here and winters down in Florida. We plan on traveling and just enjoying a day off and not having to worry about someone calling me and saying “The night manager is out” or “This one is out” or “You got to go get this.” Q: Rob, how are you going to spend your retirement? Rob: I plan on taking a couple of weeks right off the start to just sleep in and not have to worry about this place at all. Then, me and my wife talked about traveling and just go away to places and not really set a date to come home. Just go and enjoy, and if we want to stay someplace a little longer, we can. And that’s the biggest thing for us because every time we go away, we have to say “I can only stay a day and a half, and I have to get home.” Q: What’s your favorite sub? Rob: Mine is a steak and cheese. Q: Rich? Rich: It’s the eggplant parmesan. Q: Are you going to miss your favorite subs when you are gone? Are you going to go to another place? How are you going to deal with that? Rob: Oh yeah, we’re going to miss it, because you don’t see anybody out there making the subs the way we have. And if they did, they’d have to be like us – an institution that’s been here so many years. This has been our product and been our pride for so long. Rich: We’ve been fortunate to own the building outright and to own the property outright, so we never had the lease hanging over our heads, so we could pass that on to the customers without having to raise our prices up. Q: How many subs do you guys average a week? Rich: About 500 a day – more on the weekend. Q: What about on Super Bowl Sunday? Rob: We do some catering that day. It also depends on who is in the Super Bowl. If the Patriots are in the Super Bowl, we are very busy. Rich: If the Patriots are in it, it’s like Christmas Eve. And we make it a point to close. We close for the Patriots, so we can all watch it. We could actually wind up closing out by doing the Super Bowl this year [Sunday, Feb. 3] Q: So, do you have any celebrities stop here for a sandwich? Rich: Maybe over the years. ASKS | SEE PAGE 11
10 Publizr Home