he had to point to the food. Now he runs almost 400 Subway restaurants in South Carolina and has opened a Persian restaurant to boot.
Saifi, 57, is president and CEO of Subway Development Corp. of South Carolina. He operates out of building in Greenville that he has named “Mehdi.”
“Obviously it would make it somewhat more impressive if I named it Subway Headquarters or Saifi something,” Saifi told The Greenville News. “People say, ‘Is it religious? Does it mean anything?’ I say, ‘No, it’s my dad’s name.’”
Saifi recalls the conversation he had with Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca about bringing the chain to South Carolina 30 years ago. DeLuca was doubtful about an Iranian-American’s ability to start a Northern sandwich shop in the Deep South in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis.
“I said, ‘Fred, how many Subways do you have in South Carolina today?’” Saifi recalls with a smile. “He said, ‘None.’ I said, ‘Well, how bad then can I mess it up?”
The Subway franchise operates more restaurants than any other chain in the world, having passed McDonalds at the end of 2010. It now runs 36,736 franchises in 100 countries; Iran and Indonesia are the two major countries from which it is missing. Founded in 1965, Subway specializes in submarine sandwiches, hence the name, although subs—baguettes filled with meat and vegetables—are known by many different regional names such as hoagie, hero, torpedo, grinder, poor boy and Italian sandwich.
Saifi landed in the United States in Boston in 1973. His first restaurant experience was unforgettable.
As he explained to the News, “I didn’t know how to order. So you just go like this.” He closes his eyes and points. “And of course, my first chosen meal in America was liver. I had difficulty finding good food for a while.”
The family plan was for Saifi, who came from an upper-class family in Shiraz, to study at an American university and then return home. But Nancy Perkins changed those plans. Ali and Nancy were both students at Center College in Danville, Kentucky. This year, the couple celebrates 34 years of marriage.
“I have to admit, I wouldn’t have any of what I have here had it not been for Nancy,” Saifi says. “The relentless support I have had my whole life from Nancy, it’s like you can’t do any better.”
Patrick Michaels, who has worked with Saifi as the CEO of Goodwill Industries Upstate/Midlands South Carolina, said, “Ali lifted himself up from the boot straps and has sort of exemplified the American dream in some ways…. He’s got this great personal-inspiration story of being a first-generation immigrant, coming to this country,” says
Saifi served on the Goodwill board for six years and helped coordinate the first Subway-Goodwill partnership in the country. Greenville is the first place where a Goodwill store actually owns and runs its own Subway franchise. The restaurant provides jobs and food service training to people who face a barrier to employment, says Michaels.
“There’s a lot of people who got up and went to work and have a job today because of Ali’s business acumen, his business leadership and his commitment to the community.”
Saifi good-naturedly takes jabs about his intelligence, his accent, even his height (he is 5-foot-2). While some might use humor as a defense mechanism, the News says that Saifi uses it to relate to others and build relationships that are what he values most.
It might seem odd that Saifi, who grew up with traditional Persian flavors like saffron, mint and pomegranate, would go for an American sandwich chain. But it was purely practical, says Saifi. Saifi looked at 130 different franchises. IHop, McDonald’s and Howard Johnson all were contenders. The box of information he collected still sits in the basement of the Mehdi building.
Subway attracted Saifi with its simple business model. No ovens were involved, there were no disgruntled chefs to deal with, and the product was good. And a Subway franchise was available for purchase right away. He looked at one in Washington, DC, one morning in 1980. Then, with money he borrowed from an uncle and a brother-in-law in Iran, he purchased it that night.
Ali and Nancy worked side-by-side that first year, sharing a car and subsisting on a lot of sandwiches. “At first you eat a lot of Subway sandwiches because it’s so new and fresh,” Saifi says with a laugh. “Then after a while, that’s all you can afford to eat.”
The restaurant did well, and Saifi became addicted to interacting with the customers. The store quickly grew to one of the most successful Subways in the country, becoming the No. 2 grossing franchise in the US, says Saifi. He began thinking about taking on a whole territory.
One year after they opened, Ali and Nancy sold their restaurant for more than they paid for it, paid off their debts and moved to South Carolina to be closer to Nancy’s family.
On a typical Friday, Saifi will play tennis from 9 to 10 a.m. Then he heads to the Subway Development office for a day of conference calls and meetings. He goes to the Pomegranate, the restaurant he opened five years ago as an ode to his Persian culture. He won’t leave the restaurant until 8 or 9, or maybe 10 p.m., he says.
“I don’t see myself as a workaholic, though it seems like I’m always working,” Saifi says. “But I think it’s workaholic if you think you’ve got to do it, but, if it’s fun, it’s not workaholic.”
Saifi generally spends three nights and “a few lunches” at Pomegranate each week. If he’s there, he can generally be found running food or moving from table to table chatting up diners. The restaurant is his gift, he says, to the people of his adopted home city and to the people of his native homeland. Through Pomegranate, Saifi says he is sharing the Iran he grew up with.
“I think I feel obligated to represent the culture of Iran because I think it gets a bad rap,” Saifi says. “I started Pomegranate with a passion to communicate Persian culture to all my neighbors.”
The thing is, Saifi says, in the US, people feel like you have to come up with something different or reinvent the wheel. Subway’s “wheel” was already pretty good, he says.
“I don’t think of myself as anything special, and I’m telling you I’m not,” Saifi says. “Subway did not invent sandwiches, did not invent healthy. We took a position on it and made it known that it is cool to be both healthy and eat something you like the taste of.”
But, of course, special is in the eye of the beholder. In the three decades since Saifi opened the first Subway restaurant in Clemson, South Carolina, he has grown the company to 390 restaurants with 4,000 employees and annual revenues of upwards of $200 million.
Treating people with humanity is a lesson Saifi says he takes from his father, who was the dean of a university, as well as a physician. Though the elder Saifi died when Ali was 12, the son still idolizes his father.
“Something my dad taught me,” Saifi says. “It’s so easy to be kind and respectful to people that are older, bigger, stronger than you. To show true humanity, show respect to those who can’t do anything to you. If you show respect to them it shows you’re a true human.”
When he talks of his father, Saifi’s voice grows softer. “He was a very giving guy,” Saifi says of his father.
In his business, Saifi admits, he is “very non-forgiving. But I’m fair.
I treat everybody equal. It’s totally irrelevant their education, their financial, their standing, I treat everybody equal. To me, I see that as me.”