School friends, a borrowed idea and a dictionary.

Blimpie began in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1964. The International Directory of Company Histories (St. James Press, 2003) says the original Blimpie sub shop was opened there by Tony Conza, Peter DeCarlo and a third friend, whose surname it spells Bandassare; English Wikipedia spells it Angelo Baldassare, dates the opening to 16 May 1964 and says the three had been classmates at Saint Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. Both accounts say the idea came from a successful sub shop in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, called Mike’s Submarines, which the friends thought could be repeated in Hoboken; the Directory says they raised their seed capital by borrowing from friends.

The name was found, not inherited. Wikipedia says Conza did not want to call the sandwiches subs, which he felt sounded like a greasy spoon; he preferred hoagies, but Hoboken residents did not know the Philadelphia term. He went through a dictionary until he reached “blimp”, a word that sounded to him like a sandwich, and Blimpie followed.

The Directory records that customers soon asked about franchises, and that the company sold a franchise to a friend in western New York in its opening year. In 1965 Baldassare left to start his own food-service supply business. Conza and DeCarlo then moved into New York City, beginning with a store on 55th Street in Manhattan near Carnegie Hall, and soon concentrated on franchising rather than running shops themselves.

By the mid-1970s the partners disagreed about expanding into the American South. In 1976, the Directory says, Blimpie was divided into two independent companies, both keeping rights to the Blimpie trademark: DeCarlo headed Metropolitan Blimpie, later renamed Blimpie’s of New York, which controlled franchising in New York, New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast, while Conza kept the original business, incorporated in 1977 as International Blimpie Corporation. Conza remained its chairman and chief executive until January 2002, and the name on the sign was shared by two separate franchisors for three decades.

Astor, Atlanta, Kahala and MTY.

Conza’s company went public in 1983 and then tried other restaurants. The Directory says it opened Border Café, a sit-down restaurant serving southwestern food, in Manhattan in 1984, and that the parent company was renamed Astor Restaurant Group in 1986. The Border Café venture was later sold off, and in 1992 the company took the name Blimpie International, reflecting a renewed focus on subs; its shares began trading on the Nasdaq in the spring of 1993. In the mid-1990s the company placed Blimpie counters in convenience stores, petrol-station food marts, schools, hospitals and arenas, and in 1995 it opened a shop in Stockholm.

The late 1990s brought more brands. Wikipedia says the company took a majority stake in the Hawaiian chain Maui Tacos in 1997 and launched Pasta Central in 1999 as a co-branding partner for Blimpie Subs & Salads. In October 2001 an investor group led by Jeffrey Endervelt, who held the Blimpie subfranchise for parts of California, agreed to take Blimpie International private; the deal closed in January 2002, when Endervelt became chairman and chief executive.

The Arizona franchisor Kahala came next. Nation’s Restaurant News reported on 28 May 2007 that Kahala had bought Blimpie International early in 2006 and moved the chain’s headquarters from Atlanta to Scottsdale, Arizona. In May 2007 the newly merged Kahala–Cold Stone bought the assets of Metropolitan Blimpie and Blimpie Associates, the independent New York-based franchisor descended from the 1976 split. FastCasual.com reported on 17 May 2007 that the deal made Kahala Cold Stone the sole worldwide owner of the Blimpie brand, including its franchising rights and intellectual property. “We really needed to own 100 percent of the marks,” Kahala’s general counsel, Michael Reagan, told Nation’s Restaurant News.

Kahala itself changed hands twice. Restaurant Business reported on 25 May 2016 that the Toronto-based Serruya family, known for the Yogen Früz chain, had acquired a controlling interest in Kahala in 2013, and that the Montreal-based MTY Food Group had agreed to buy Kahala, whose brands included Cold Stone Creamery and Blimpie. FastCasual.com reported on 22 July 2016 that shareholders had approved the merger and that Kahala Brands would continue to be run from Scottsdale. MTY Food Group has owned Blimpie, through Kahala, since 2016, and still lists it among its brands.

Design and documentation.

A sandwich shop has a short list of surfaces on which its identity can live. Outside, there is the sign over the door and, in many cases, a window or a pole sign that has to be read from a moving car. Inside, there is the menu board behind the counter, which carries the name, the colours and the type all at once, and which has to stay legible while prices and items change around it.

The rest of the identity travels with the food. Sandwiches are wrapped in printed paper or foil, slipped into bags, stacked into boxes for catering and handed over with cups and napkins, so a chain’s name and pattern leave the shop on objects that are thrown away within the hour. Ordering slips, stickers and receipts carry it too.

Each guide in this group looks at one sandwich or sub chain through those surfaces: where the business started and who founded it, who has owned it since, and how its name, logo, signage and packaging are described in sources that can be dated. Where a fact rests only on the company’s own account, the guide says so.

A coined name, a tongue-twister and a kiosk.

Blimpie’s main design asset is its word. It names no founder and no place; it was picked from a dictionary because it sounded like a sandwich, and it has outlived every change of owner, headquarters and parent company recorded above. From 1976 until 2007 the same name was franchised by two separate companies, one centred on New York and one on the rest of the country; Kahala then bought both halves and brought the trademarks under one owner.

Advertising has played with the sound of the word. The International Directory of Company Histories says that around 1993, after doubling its marketing budget, the company launched a campaign across television, radio, print and point-of-purchase material, introducing the tag line “Simply Blimpie for fresh-sliced subs.” Some of the television spots, it says, showed people on the street struggling to repeat the tongue-twisting phrase “Simply Blimpie”, turning the name’s awkwardness into the joke.

The brand has also been sold in small formats. Wikipedia says that in 1994 the company introduced the “Blimpie kiosk”, a movable, condensed restaurant designed to fit into a small area at stadiums, fairs and other events, along with a refrigerated case for convenience stores. The Directory lists convenience stores, petrol-station food marts, schools, office buildings, hospitals and sports arenas among the places a Blimpie counter could be found by 2002, so the name often appears on a sign inside someone else’s building rather than over a shop of its own.

For a design guide, Blimpie shows how a short, coined word can carry a brand through a split, a reunion and several owners, while its signs shrink to fit a kiosk or a counter. Compare it with Jersey Mike’s, which English Wikipedia traces to the Point Pleasant sub shop that inspired Blimpie’s founders, and Subway, which English Wikipedia says was founded a year after the Hoboken shop opened. For this guide we use Hoboken red, harbour navy and mustard with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Blimpie’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.