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Comment by drivingmenuts | Hacker News Reader

Their food is disappointing and now their business practices are, too?

I'm really wishing the NYT had tried to get a comment from Jimmy John's corporate before publication. I'd love to hear their justification for that.

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"Our SuperSekrit(TM) ingredients and procedures make our sandwiches so much better than our competitors, and we have to protect that."

Turn the problem into a chance for free positive PR, no matter how much you have to twist things to do so. That's what I'd expect, anyway.

Here's all I really need to know about the company:

http://www.smilepolitely.com/splog/jimmy_john_is_a_big_man._...

I used to eat there pretty regularly until I saw those photos. I haven't ate there since.

0_0

Fuck...I've eaten there fairly regularly myself. No longer.

Probably something like protecting their operational advantages i.e. standardized processes found at the retail front line that give them a competitive advantage

I'm guessing they don't want to spend time training people only to have them leave for another shop. I wonder if there is a limit on this clause?

Maybe I'm a clueless jackass, but I've made sandwiches before, and I've seen sandwiches made in sandwich shops before, and I can't imagine this "training" taking longer than a shift. The training that isn't directly related to sandwiches, e.g. how to stock the cooler and where the dumpster is located, is likely to vary from shop to shop. Most hiring shop managers are going to look more closely at how long one has held jobs than whether those jobs were with a competing sandwich chain.

I'm thinking more about the type of training that teaches someone to be a responsible worker, productive, show up on time, etc.

I worked at a Jimmy Johns for a few months. They make the sandwiches in a very specific way to optimize for speed. The average time between order and handoff to a customer was about a minute during busy times.

Is that "very specific" method of assembly so complex or so secretive that it couldn't be deduced by anyone camped out at a table near the register?

Somehow I doubt it.

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