Three friends started the sandwich chain Blimpie Subs, which is still in business in 2022. But many of its stores have closed, and the company has changed hands many times.

Tony Conza chose the name Blimpie because he didn’t like calling the sandwiches “subs,” which sounded like a greasy spoon. Conza liked to call them “hoagies,” but people in Hoboken didn’t know that phrase from Philadelphia.

He looked in a dictionary until he found the word “blimp,” which sounded almost like “sandwich.” By the start of 1992, there were Blimpie stores in 27 states.

That year, the chain had more than 500 stores, so the company changed its name to Blimpie International, Inc. In the spring of 1993, Blimpie began to trade its shares on the NASDAQ platform. The company started to market itself more than it had in the three years before. It spent three times as much on marketing, or about $2 million per year.

In 2022, will The Blimpie Subs still be in business?

The Blimpie Subs are still open, but they are no longer as popular as they once were. Lots of their stores in different places have closed down because they don’t get enough business and the owners are always changing.

In the first half of the 1990s, Blimpie made a lot of money, but in the second half, the subs began to lose money. By the mid-1990s, most of the subfranchisor rights for the Blimpie Subs chain had been sold. This stopped what had been a steady stream of income, and by the early 2000s, Blimpie International was in trouble.

As Blimpie’s problems kept getting worse, investors lost interest in the company, and the price of its stock went down. Blimpie left the public market because it didn’t see much benefit in being a company that was traded on the stock market.

In October 2001, a group of private investors led by Jeffrey K. Endervelt reached a deal to buy Blimpie International for $25.7 million.

What happened to the Blimpie Subs sandwich brand?

The guys who started Blimpie Subs together went their separate ways. In 1965, Bandassare left Blimpie, but Conza and DeCarlo kept selling Blimpie franchises all over the northeast and mid-Atlantic without him.

In 1976, Conza wanted to grow into the South, but DeCarlo didn’t. At the start of the 1980s, Conza wanted to grow his business. In 1984, he opened a Mexican food and drink restaurant in Manhattan called Border Café.

Later, in 1986, Tony opened two more Border Cafés in New York, but he lost a lot of money doing so. He later admitted that Border Café was a huge mistake because he spent less time, money, and effort on Blimpie.

During this time, Blimpie’s rival, Subway, grew all over the country, which put Blimpie’s finances at risk.

How much money does Tony Conza, the owner of Blimpie Subs, have in 2022?

Tony Conza, the owner of Blimpie Subs, was worth more than $50 million at the height of his career.

In 1964, he and two of his high school friends had a great idea: they would sell submarine sandwiches. Even though it wasn’t a new idea, it was new enough in the restaurant business that it stood out and became popular when the three opened their first restaurant with a $2,000 loan from a local businessman in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Blimpie International now has more than 2,100 franchised stores in 15 countries that make a total of $350 million in sales each year. Conza has been through a lot of ups and downs. He has lost and won big, but he has never stopped loving Blimpie.

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