The Next Big Thing
Photo © Rob Jones
What’s the Next Big Thing?
We’re about due for it I think.
A few weeks ago, I was in Manchester to go to the dentist when I randomly stumbled upon an ‘event’ outside Piccadilly Station.
Perhaps in former times my finely honed journalistic skills would have prompted me to find out what on earth was going on. It seemed to be the launch of a new kind of Subway sandwich shop. Certainly a lot of excitement, a TV crew, and a large crowd filming with their top of the range phones. To be honest, I am not sure anyone really knew what was going on. After the string was pulled and the signage revealed, people just drifted away. It was raining, and there didn’t seem to be anything else to see.
It came to mind this afternoon, so I went looking to find out what the story was. I found nothing online, but coincidentally I did see that the death of the co-founder of the chain, Peter Buck, has been announced this very day at the age of 90.
In 1965, when the business was founded, he was working as a nuclear physicist designing power stations. A young friend asked him how he could make some money to pay his college fees. Buck loaned him $1000 and suggested he set up a sandwich shop, like the Italian sandwich shops he remembered in his youth. He even drove the 17 year old to Maine to see the shop for himself. And yes, the sandwiches are called Subs, because they look like submarines. In the US they also go by the name of Heroes, Grinders, Hoagies and Po’boys.
And the rest is history - it’s now the largest single-brand restaurant chain, and the largest restaurant operator, in the world.
The story has the same mythic quality as the creation of McDonalds … only the other way round.
In their case … it was a 15 year old boy who triggered the legend. Ray Kroc worked as a piano player, paper cup salesman, and a food mixer seller. It was the latter job which led him to Dick and Mac McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernadino in California. There he found a successful business founded on offering a very limited menu, and quick service. Kroc bought the rights and transformed the business into the icon it is today.
(Note: I was at the opening night of the first McDonalds in Wales, in Cwmbran, and also visited the first in Moscow shortly after it launched. I know. These things happen to me. )
Then there’s KFC - Colonel Sanders spotting a gap in th market. And I could go on to mention Wendy’s, Burger King and Wimpy’s. But I won’t.
(Although, I must say that in the 1970s in London, Wimpy’s refused entry to women after midnight. Make of that what you will.)
But all these stories are bright ideas that gripped the moment and attained iconic status.
So what’s next?
Who’s about to set the world on fire?
What haven’t we realised we can’t do without?
R
