Two brothers from a firefighting family.

Firehouse Subs was started in Jacksonville, Florida, by the brothers Chris Sorensen and Robin Sorensen, both former firefighters. English Wikipedia says the brothers followed the same career path as their father, Rob Sorensen, a veteran of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department, and that the opening Firehouse Subs restaurant was in Jacksonville on 10 October 1994. The company’s legal name, Wikipedia says, is Firehouse Restaurant Group, Inc., and it still trades from Jacksonville.

Growth came in stages. Wikipedia says the founders tried franchising in 1995, pulled back soon afterwards and bought back the franchised locations, choosing instead to run company-owned shops, mainly around Jacksonville. In 1998 the chain opened a restaurant outside Florida, and in 2000 the founders took a different approach, using consultants to plan franchise growth and arranging financing for prospective franchisees. A second wave of franchising began in 2001.

From there the name travelled. Wikipedia records restaurants in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico from 2011, opened by the franchisee Caribbean Restaurants; restaurants in Canada from October 2015, beginning in Oshawa, Ontario, with the franchisee OnFire Restaurant Group; an airport restaurant at Jacksonville International in June 2017, followed by Orlando International that December; a university campus restaurant at Western New England University in April 2018; and a restaurant at Jacksonville’s Baptist Medical Center in 2020. It also records a loyalty programme launched in 2015.

The menu borrows the language of the fire service. Wikipedia lists hot specialty subs with names such as the Hook & Ladder, the Engineer and the Firehouse Hero, served on toasted rolls, and says a sub ordered “Fully Involved” comes with vegetables and condiments. It says the Sorensen brothers remain in charge of the menu.

Restaurant Brands International and a move abroad.

On 15 November 2021, Wikipedia says, Restaurant Brands International, the parent of Burger King, announced that it would acquire Firehouse Subs, and the purchase was completed on 15 December 2021. Restaurant Business reported the completion that day, saying the Toronto-based company now owned Firehouse alongside Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes, that Firehouse would keep its Jacksonville headquarters, and that its chief executive, Don Fox, would remain with the brand. Restaurant Brands International has owned Firehouse Subs since December 2021.

The same report quoted Fox saying, a month earlier, that the partnership would bring international development much closer than the company could have managed alone, and quoted Restaurant Brands International’s then chief executive, José Cil, praising the brand and its business in Canada. Wikipedia records that Firehouse Subs opened a restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland, on 22 June 2023, outside North America, and lists Mexico, Albania, Kosovo and markets in the Middle East among the places where the brand now trades, with further openings planned.

Owing to the founders’ backgrounds, the restaurants are designed to feel like a fire station. Wikipedia says the interior decor of Firehouse Subs locations is inspired by fire stations and often includes firefighter equipment and memorabilia. In a 2015 interview with Restaurant Development + Design, the chain’s chief mural artist, Joe “Art Brush” Puskas, described the murals as an important part of the interior branding, and said the company’s corporate office did not get involved in their content beyond requiring that every restaurant has one.

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 faux brick wall that became a mural programme.

The defining piece of Firehouse Subs design is on the wall. In his 2015 interview with Restaurant Development + Design, Joe Puskas said that when Chris and Robin Sorensen were preparing to open their restaurant in Jacksonville in 1994, they were looking for someone to paint a faux brick wall to give it a firehouse feel. He suggested a mural instead, and the founders liked the idea. Puskas said he painted the early murals directly on restaurant walls, travelling to each site, until the chain grew too quickly for that and the work moved to an in-house art department.

He described how that department worked at the time of the interview. Puskas, an independent contractor, said his team worked from a studio at Firehouse Subs’ headquarters, with several murals in progress at once, and that franchisees were often brought in to watch. He said he designed and drew every mural and did the portraits and finishing touches himself, while his crew painted other portions. Franchisees sent photographs of local landmarks or community institutions, and Puskas proposed ideas based on them. The aim, he said, was to pay homage to the local fire department, so every mural included fire trucks and firefighters.

The murals were made to travel. Puskas said they were painted on canvas with exterior house paint, an acrylic that dries quickly and has a semi-gloss finish that can be wiped clean, then rolled up and shipped to each restaurant, where a contractor installed them. Wikipedia says each mural is hand drawn and painted at the company’s headquarters and reflects the fire and police service of the restaurant’s own community, so no two are the same.

For a design guide, Firehouse Subs shows how a founding story can become a working design system: a palette of station colours, menu names borrowed from fire-service vocabulary, and one handmade, locally specific image in every dining room. Compare it with its sister brands Popeyes and Tim Hortons. For this guide we use engine red, ladder yellow and soot with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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