Jersey Mike's is going public, and most of the coverage compares it to Cava and Sweetgreen. That's the comparison the market can make, because those are the sandwich-adjacent names with public filings.
But Jersey Mike's closest competitors aren't public. Firehouse Subs, Jimmy John's, McAlister's, Potbelly, Charleys, Penn Station, Schlotzsky's, Port of Subs — these are private systems. They don't file an S-1 or hold an earnings call. They disclose their unit economics once a year, in a document most people never open: the Franchise Disclosure Document, filed with state regulators and available to anyone who asks.
We pulled those filings for Jersey Mike's and nine sandwich peers. Every figure below comes from that brand's 2026 FDD, as filed.
Where Jersey Mike's lands on unit volume
Item 19 of an FDD is where a franchisor discloses what its locations actually take in. Jersey Mike's reports an average unit volume of $1,367,578 across 2,606 traditional franchised restaurants.
The median across the eight sandwich peers that disclose a comparable figure is roughly $990,623. Jersey Mike's disclosed average runs about 38% above that median.
It is not the highest in the category. McAlister's Deli discloses $1,868,219 across 477 units — above Jersey Mike's. Potbelly reports $1,333,774 systemwide, just below it. At the other end, Port of Subs discloses $540,305 across its franchised locations.
What it costs to open one
Item 7 covers the estimated initial investment. Jersey Mike's discloses a range of $436,176 to $1,162,228 — which lands almost exactly at the category median of roughly $419,895 to $999,371.
On cost to open, in other words, Jersey Mike's is a fairly typical sandwich build. The spread across the category is wide: Charleys starts at $203,492 on the low end, while McAlister's tops out at $2,575,400.
The blank spaces are worth reading too
The most notable thing in the comparison may be a figure that isn't there.
Subway is the largest brand in the category by a wide margin — 18,773 U.S. outlets. Its current FDD makes no financial performance representation at all. There is no average to compare. In the broader quick-service set, Taco Bell's Item 19 contains illustrative and forward-looking material rather than actual historical sales.
Disclosing an Item 19 is optional. A franchisor may elect not to make one, and many don't. Jersey Mike's discloses an average across 2,606 real restaurants with its own stated exclusion criteria — which is a fact about its disclosure practice, not a judgment about any brand. It's the kind of thing that only becomes visible when the filings sit side by side.
How to read these averages
Item 19 tables are not standardized, and this is the part most comparisons get wrong.
Each franchisor decides which of its locations to include in the disclosed average, and how to define sales — net or gross, one format or systemwide. For most brands in this set, the disclosed figure covers 80-99% of the system. Two are narrower, and both are labeled as such: Schlotzsky's figure reflects its drive-thru-format restaurants only, because it reports formats separately and publishes no blended average, and Port of Subs reports franchised units only, with company-owned locations disclosed separately.
Every figure is shown as filed, with the segment it represents named. Cross-brand comparisons are directional, not exact like-for-like.
What this is, and what it isn't
ClearlyFDD does not comment on securities offerings. We take no view on the stock, the valuation, or whether anyone should buy it.
Everything above is drawn from documents that are already public — filed with state franchise regulators, available to anyone willing to read several hundred pages per brand. Our work is to make them readable: to put the figures a franchise buyer, a reporter, or a curious investor would otherwise spend a week assembling into one place, cited to the item and page they came from.
The full side-by-side tables — average unit volume and cost to open for all ten brands, with system size, disclosed segment, and unit counts — are on our Jersey Mike's data page, along with a one-pager PDF.
The same neutral, source-cited breakdown exists for more than 1,300 franchise brands in the ClearlyFDD library.
Source: 2026 Franchise Disclosure Documents, Item 7 and Item 19, as filed with state franchise regulators. Figures shown as disclosed.
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