On this one year anniversary, Alonzo Page shares reflections on running his sandwich shop, Counter Service, and how a tasty ad was developed as an innovative response to the Super Bowl ads.
Happy birthday to us.
A year ago, we put an oven and a cold line in the loading bay of our central kitchen and called it Counter Service.
One early review said someone had opened a “sandwich speakeasy” in the old Dairy Queen on 14th Street.
Not wrong.
It wasn’t really a restaurant.
It was a pop-up. An experiment.
“That sandwich thing” the founder of Chipotle was doing with the founder of Peloton.
We never corrected anyone. Mostly because we didn’t know either.
We just liked good sandwiches and thought this was the fastest way to get them into people’s hands.
For a while, we “couldn’t” even post about what we were doing.
The sandwiches have meat in them!
How were we supposed to explain to customers of the vegan robot concept we’d just shut down that we were now slinging chicken—and, God forbid, beef?
Then we shipped the first post.
Orders tripled the next day.
Turns out other people like good sandwiches too. A lot.
I’ve been thinking about how to make sense of the last year.
And I keep coming back to this:
Everything that happened was a reaction to the thing immediately before it.
We sell out one day; we make more the next.
A sprinkler pops off; we grab a mop.
Deliveries don’t show up; we hop in a van.
This, I’ve realized, is running a sandwich shop.
Taking the most immediate, helpful action.
Again, again, and again.
Now.
I’ll be plain:
We’ve been running so hard we can’t really see the start line anymore.
Not that we’ve spent much time looking back.
But if anyone’s asking:
Yes—everything and nothing has changed.
See you next year.
Bonus content: Watch the video on YouTube.