Jersey Mike’s Employees Love UniVac So Much They Bought the T-Shirt

Jersey Mike’s, founded in 1956, is one of the country’s fastest growing sandwich chains. With 3,140 restaurants to date, Jersey Mike’s serves sub sandwiches on store-baked bread with cold cuts and cheeses sliced to order. They also sell hot sandwiches, drinks, chips, and desserts.

The Jersey Mike’s in Morristown, NJ, is particularly busy location. Opened in 2022, the restaurant builds and serves between 300 and 350 14-inch sandwiches (called the Giant) a day. During the lunch rush this site often achieves more than $1000 in sales every hour, something staff calls “back-to-back thousand-dollar hours.” Combine that high volume with store’s unusually small footprint, less than 1,000-square-feet, and staff were quickly challenged with keeping the kitchen floor clean.

The flooring material, six-by-six-inch grouted tile, didn’t help. “Little lettuce shreds, cornmeal from the bread, oil, and vinegar constantly get caught in the grout lines,” explains shift leader George Yermak. “It’s almost impossible to remove a mess like that with a broom and mopping left the floor really dirty.”

Fortunately for Yermak and the rest of the crew, this Jersey Mike’s had a UniVac® from Kaivac from day one. The UniVac made cleaning the kitchen and lobby floor quick, easy, and actually enjoyable. “I always ask for the floor cleaning task,” says Yermak. “I like spreading the cleaning solution and watching everything come up out of the grout lines. It’s satisfying and fun.”

The party came to a sudden end when the UniVac was out of service while waiting for replacement parts. Yermak and the rest of the closing crew had to resort to sweeping and mopping. Not only was this manual method less effective, it also took much more time. “We ended up punching out late. Our manager didn’t like that,” says Yermak.

But the excitement started right back up once the replacement parts arrived. Yermak was so pleased he reached out to Kaivac to say, “Your systems have made a noticeable difference in maintaining cleanliness and efficiency in our store, and we genuinely appreciate the quality and performance of your equipment.”

In fact, the employees are such big fans that Yermak designed his own “Certified Kaivac Expert” tee shirt just for fun. “The crew likes to wear it under our uniforms. When the store closes, we unbutton our uniforms and show off the shirt.”

While Yermak’s homemade design looks sharp, there’s nothing like real thing. So, Kaivac sent the store some official merch to celebrate how much they value these machines. Now, the UniVac is back up and running, floors are clean and safe, and the workers are decked out in official Kaivac swag. “We are definitely satisfied,” says Yermak.