Meet the Founders: Chris and Robin Sorensen
The Faces, the Brains, the Hearts — and the Stomachs — Behind Firehouse Subs
By Mae Velasco, HeroFuel® Reporter
Named “Company of the Year” by KPMG in 2006. The №3 fastest growing chain in 2015. Declared the “National Chain” Winner of the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Neighbor Award for community service. At almost 1,000 restaurants and more than $17 million donated to thousands of public safety organizations through its nonprofit organization, the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation, Firehouse Subs is, well, on fire.
But who were the trailblazers who made it all possible?
Co-founders and brother dynamic duo Chris and Robin Sorensen are no strangers to the limelight. Most know them for their quirky antics. Their hilarious radio bloopers and commercial outtakes are enough proof of that. However, there’s more to them beyond their goofy sarcasm and snark.
To kick off HeroFuel in 2016, we’re bringing you two heroes who fuel other heroes.
SPARKING THE FIRE
For Chris Sorensen, his journey to Firehouse Subs was “all over the map.”
Before he joined his father, a firefighter who retired with 43 years under his belt, at the downtown Jacksonville fire station, he explored an array of different passions.
“Different is a good word,” Chris said. “I’ve been a musician since I was 9 years old. Rock, jazz, blues — all that stuff. That was my whole life.”
“I played my prom when I was 15. So I mean, I was very good. I have to pat myself on the back,” he continued lightheartedly, but good is an understatement.
Chris toured around the country, his band playing in big clubs with artists like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen up before them on the marquee. He’s had close calls to fame, at one point being part of a select group of talented guitarists sent to New York to audition for Foghat, one of the greatest English rock bands in the ’70s. Since he was 13 years old, Chris has actively written music and played lead guitar. To this day, he still records songs in his own 2,500-square-foot studio.
His love for self-expression doesn’t stop there.
He paints, he collects art, and as a self-proclaimed history nut, he has a whole cabinet filled with knickknacks, including mammoth teeth, shark teeth and other fossils he has personally hunted from dredge sites. Influenced by the ideas of diversity the show “Star Trek” brought when it aired and by Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the Moon, he’s become fascinated by space. He also gardens and dabbles in photography.
With an artistic repertoire this eclectic, what doesn’t Chris do?
“I don’t travel because I have bad motion sickness. I can’t fly, which sucks,” Chris said.
Yet, his motion sickness didn’t stop him from soaring to new heights.
When the music industry changed in the ’80s and things didn’t fall according to his plan, a new plan fell together.
“My Dad said, ‘Why don’t you try the fire department?’ And I said, ‘Well, okay, I’ll give it a try,’” he explained.
It didn’t take much to convince him. Chris had grown up immersed in the firefighting culture. His first haircut was even at his father’s fire station. Among the Rock Gods and astronauts of Apollo 11, in his eyes, firefighters were heroes with an undeniable passion for protecting those around them.
It’s safe to say that after devotedly working as a firefighter for 15 years, Chris had that same passion burning within him.
For younger brother Robin, the journey was a little more straight-forward — much like his personality.
“Lord, have mercy,” he joked when asked about where his life has led him. “It’s like I’m on the couch.”
“Basically, I’m a foodie that loves humor. I love food, I love cooking food, I love serving food, I love serving people, and outside my family, of course, I absolutely love the restaurant business,” he said.
Growing up with grandparents and a mother who loved to cook, it was clear the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Sometimes Robin watched his mother toil with recipes, and other times he tagged along with his father to the fire station, where the crew gathered around a big table, surrounded by meals, fellowship and camaraderie.
He remembers when the local fire chief, a family friend, visited his home and grilled some mean ribs.
“I stood out there the entire time. He showed me how to do it,” Robin said. “I cooked that recipe of ribs probably dozens and dozens of times over my life.”
His passion only grew from there.
“Now that I’m older looking back, I see in friends that sometimes they haven’t found their passion. You know, it’s hard. Even with my kids, I have four kids, it’s hard to know where you fit in, where you’re supposed to be,” he said. “Even though I knew, it took me a long time to figure it out, too.”
Back when Robin was still working out which path in life to take, he followed in the footsteps of the men in his family.
“I’m the youngest between me and Chris, eight years younger. Like my Dad and like my brother, I followed them into the fire department and grew up in it. Everybody we hung out with was in it. It’s part of my family, my DNA,” he said.
Soon after he joined the department, Robin fell in love with the fellowship and the brotherhood, but he felt that there was a part of him that was still missing, a potential that went untapped.
Little did Chris and Robin know, one day they would be sitting in a parking lot when an idea would spark the spreading-like-a-wildfire chain that is now Firehouse Subs.
FUELING THE FIRE
Being a firefighter was at times a thankless, grueling job.
For Chris, making only $14,500 a year with three kids and a wife at home meant that side jobs were necessary to make ends meet, but he was no stranger to hard work. He watched his father, a full-time firefighter every third day, work a second full-time job on the other days for 30 years.
Both of their parents, Robin added, were driven individuals with a great work ethic.
“We had two things going on in our household when we were raised: one was firefighting and one was business, and we loved both of them,” Robin said.
The two brothers were inspired by their mother and father who ran a thriving television business before the rise of big department stores ultimately shut down the mom-and-pop shops in the area.
“That’s when we learned customer service was going above and beyond the extra mile. That was the big foundation of where we learned how to take care of people,” Chris said.
Entrepreneurs in their own right, Chris and Robin teamed up to support their families, whether it was through buying, fixing and reselling cars or recording videos at weddings.
That’s when Robin decided to take the plunge.
He left the fire department, much to the dismay of many, to work in the foodservice business and learn the ropes of what it meant to own a restaurant.
“I realized where I wanted to be,” Robin said. “I was happy, but it occurred to me one day that there was something I liked better, something for me. I wasn’t unhappy as a fireman, but I was very happy in the food business. I just felt like I was in the right place, and it felt great. It felt right. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Always a team, it was no surprise that Chris, who still worked as a firefighter even years after the first Firehouse Subs opened, joined his brother.
“I was always interested in food, the art of it,” Chris said, and ever the artistic soul, it would soon become apparent that he could use his creative, right-brain flair to further fan the flames of his and Robin’s new adventure.
What motivated the Sorensen brothers to open their first restaurant?
“Basically, we were broke,” Chris admitted. “We didn’t really know what we were doing.”
The pair took the time to study everything from the ground up, whether it be menu development or trade equipment.
“We spent literally years mulling over different restaurant concept ideas. Lots of different names, lots of different things. I remember when I met my wife in 1989, one of the first things I told her was my new idea for a restaurant called ‘The Robin’s Nest Café,’” Robin said with a laugh.
Nothing seemed to stick. The brothers went on from one idea to the next, until the answer arrived at their hands — in the form of a sandwich.
It was around 1992 when subs were the “in” thing. Instead of creating their own concept, the Sorensens considered franchising. They visited a few sub shops, but after several meetings, and after one particularly disappointing visit, they walked away and ended up standing outside to knock their heads together.
In that one conversation, in that one, random parking lot, their lives changed forever.
“I realize now this is kind of how we operate. We kind of have to be in the moment, and in the moment where things are happening, that’s when all the ideas started flowing. The entire inspiration came from that meeting, from realizing we can do better than them,” Robin said.
Everything that happened afterward whizzed by in a blur. After visiting a deli in New York to learn about steaming meats and cheeses, stumbling upon the talent that would eventually make up their team, the generous donations of family and friends — and the kindness of a landlord who offered to build out their first store — the concept and design began to build itself.
The creative juices were flowing and the ideas were cooking. Like the perfect meal, the ingredients were coming together to create Firehouse Subs.
The one goal the Sorensens did not want to forget was to honor their family history. Coming from a proud line of cousins, uncles and immediate relatives who were police officers, World War II and Vietnam War veterans, and of course, firefighters, Chris and Robin knew those stories would motivate their brand.
“We’re not a themed-restaurant, we’re the real deal. It wasn’t just the look. It was from the heart,” Chris emphasized. “Firehouse was just a great name. Added subs to it, and that’s how it came about.”
October 1994 was nerve-wracking and exciting all at once.
Their first Firehouse Subs location opened.
“With about 60 to 80 bucks in the drawer, we had to make it that first day or it was going to be rough,” Chris said.
They had nothing to worry about. The lines were out the door.
“There were long days, long nights. We worked open to close every day,” Chris said, thinking back to that first week and how he would trade off sandwich runs in his apron with rescue runs in his firefighting suit. “It was the greatest time, really, of the whole thing.”
Their hard work, personal financial sacrifices and sleepless nights would soon pay off, because in that one year, three stores opened.
“We were already so happy with just that one. It just blew our minds,” he said.
BURNING STRONG
More than 20 years later, the Firehouse Subs fire is still burning strong.
“Here we are, [over] 950 stores nationwide, in Canada and Puerto Rico. It’s just incredible. You have to pinch yourself from time to time,” Chris chuckled.
Robin couldn’t agree more.
“We’ve been given this gift. The company, the team, the staff, the employees, all of us together have accomplished something greater than we’ve ever imagined. That’s the greatest thing about it,” Robin said.
But more than serving their subs, Chris and Robin have found another way to serve their community: through the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation.
This tremendous cause, dedicated to improving the life-saving capabilities and the lives of local heroes and their communities, can be read about in this 10-Year Anniversary post that previously appeared on HeroFuel, as well as in this feature. It’s a major milestone that both Sorensens consider one of the greatest accomplishments in their careers.
It all began during a relief trip to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Chris and Robin traveled to Mississippi and witnessed the calamity firsthand. Boats were flipped across roads, cars were scattered like broken toys and debris flooded the streets. Entire towns were leveled.
“It was eye-opening. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was like a nuclear bomb went off,” Chris said.
The Firehouse Subs team handed out food to people hanging onto hope after losing everything. They donated a firetruck to a local department that was completely submerged in water. And from then on, they vowed to not only help those in need when disaster struck, but they would also help the first-responders who would be there to save them.
From rescue equipment such as all-terrain vehicles, bulletproof vests, boats, trackers and basic gear, to relief education and other support funds, the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation has donated more than $17 million to 1,000 communities and 1,000 organizations — and the number keeps growing.
Still, Chris and Robin would hardly call themselves heroes.
“I never considered myself a hero. I’ve drug people out of burning buildings, cut them out of car wrecks, but I never thought of myself a hero,” Chris said. “I think the people you see who don’t have any training stopping and helping somebody — they’re just unselfish. People that help out of the good of their heart. Those are real heroes.”
“A lot of people have money, a lot of people can do things and they don’t do it,” Robin elaborated. “I think a hero in my mind is people who step up when they don’t have to, helps when nobody knows.”
If not heroes, would they describe themselves as successful?
“Looking back, it’s easy to say ‘These guys are geniuses!’” Robin snickered, raising the pitch in his voice in mock praise, only half-teasing. “But believe me, when we were looking forward, we were looking clueless. There were so many things we didn’t know. We were just lucky and fortunate things just happened to work out in our favor. It’s a miracle we’re here.”
They simply rolled with the punches and made the best decisions they could as the opportunities presented themselves. With clear heads, smart saving and a whole ‘lotta heart, drive, determination and passion, not only from the two of them, but from their entire team, Firehouse Subs has become the awe-inspiring entity it is today.
“To this day, I love being in the kitchen. What I love about the food business is the interaction of preparing something you put your heart and soul into, something you’re proud of, and serving it to friends,” Robin said, recalling the start of Firehouse Subs. “It was never for a second that I’d make more money, or that we’d have a thousand restaurants — that has nothing to do with it. If today I owned my own restaurant, one store, doing what I love to do and could provide for my family? I’d be completely content.”
With all of these goals coming to fruition, what feats are these brothers most proud of?
“I’m proud of my brother,” Chris said, thinking back to the little boy he left behind at home when he started traveling with his band at 17 after graduating high school. “You know, like I said, he’s eight years younger, but I’ve watched him develop into an incredible business man.”
“I have three grown kids. Married 31 years. And that’s been the greatest thing to me, having a family,” Chris continued.
Firehouse Subs has and always will be founded on family, so it’s no surprise Robin echoed similar thoughts.
“When I was a young kid, I equated success to wealth,” Robin began. “I’ve learned a long time ago that success is someone who is happy and doing what’s right in their heart. My wife is the most successful person I know. She wanted to be a mother. She has four kids and is a great mother. That has nothing to do with money or anything — she’s happy.”
And now finally achieving his dream with only a bright future ahead?
“I felt like this is where I was supposed to be and I’m happy to be home,” he said.
