Much like the towering butties with which it has become synonymous, Sandwich Sandwich’s second London site is big… really big. Indeed, its founder says that when the 3,500sq ft site, located on Mark Lane in the City, opens next week it will be ‘the biggest sandwich shop in the UK’.
The size of the site is a striking reflection of the group’s success in the capital since it opened its first London outpost on Gresham Street in the City last summer. Sandwich Sandwich first established itself more than a decade ago in Bristol, where it now operates three sites, and has long been considered a local favourite. In recent years, though, the brand’s popularity has skyrocketed, both nationally and internationally, thanks to social media, the visual impact of its deep-filled sandwiches proving to be a viral smash on Instagram and TikTok. And as such, the group’s arrival in the capital was met with plenty of hype.
Ahead of the opening we were a bit scared that no one would come out for us
“It was overwhelming,” says founder and CEO Nick Kleiner. “Ahead of the opening we were a bit scared that no one would come out for us. But once we were on site and started chatting to locals and nearby office workers, we saw there was interest. Still, the reaction exceeded all expectations.”
That reaction at one point included police having to disperse a 250-strong crowd, which formed one day in the lead up to the launch after the group announced on its socials that it was giving away free sandwiches made during staff training. On its first official day of trading, the queue on Gresham Street averaged around an hour and the restaurant sold out of bread by 3pm.
Evolving the operation
Even now you’ll often find a queue outside the Gresham Street site on any given lunchtime, hence the decision to scale up for the second London location. The Mark Lane restaurant will be able to accommodate roughly 80 customers inside before the need for an outdoor queue to form. Additionally, the site will introduce kiosks to speed up ordering.
“We’re going over to a kiosk system to try and address the whole queueing thing,” explains Kleiner. “While people don’t mind waiting, we want the whole customer experience to be great from start to finish. We’ve spent a lot of time working out how to get the operational flow right. We learnt from Gresham Street, what worked and what didn’t. We’re a business at the end of the day and we don’t want people to wait too long.”
As before, all the sandwiches ordered will be prepared at the filling display area, a focal point across all of Sandwich Sandwich’s sites that has the appearance of an old-school sandwich counter such as you might find in a bakery, but on steroids with enormous piles of meat, cheese and salad.
Kleiner likens the counter to that you might find in a gelateria. “It’s our shop window. We don’t want to lose that, but we do want to evolve the operation to run in a more contemporary way so that people can get through quicker.”
‘Sandwiches so good we named them twice’
We’re sat in Sandwich Sandwich’s Gresham Street site on a cold and grey Wednesday in late January. It’s 11am, and while the lunchtime rush is yet to take hold there’s still a steady stream of people passing through: ordering sandwiches, grabbing a coffee, or treating themselves to one of the brand’s chunky cheesecake slices, which are made daily in store.
Kleiner launched the business that would become Sandwich Sandwich in 2010 as the Cotham Sandwich Company. A self-taught chef, he had previously run restaurants and wine bars in both London and Bristol, and at the time owned a modern British restaurant in Cotham, an affluent, leafy, inner-city suburb of Bristol. The decision to launch a sandwich shop was born out of a want to add another revenue stream to the business.
“There was a unit next door [to the restaurant] that was so small it had been left vacant for several years. And I thought a sandwich shop would do well there. I had the infrastructure to prepare the sandwiches from the restaurant kitchen next door, so I just went for it.”
As he predicted, the sandwich shop did well and by 2012 Kleiner was looking to open a flagship sandwich shop on Baldwin Street in the centre of Bristol. Around the same time, he also sold the restaurant.
“Running a restaurant is much harder than running a business like Sandwich Sandwich,” Kleiner notes. “The hours are long, which I don’t mind, but the model means you need to be busy every day and every night. You can’t just rely on peaks and weekends; it will not sustain you.”
The decision to expand the sandwich business is what led to the name change. “It was actually my father that came up with it,” he continues. “We were no longer just based in Cotham, and we needed to have a brand name that reflected that. It was literally as simple as us believing the sandwiches we offered were so good we named them twice.”
A family business
Back then, the sandwiches weren’t the jaw-challenging behemoths they are now, though they were still substantial. That evolution came about as a result of Kleiner’s son Josh joining the business. “We wouldn’t be sat here today without Josh,” Kleiner admits. “Things changed massively when he joined the business.”
Keenly aware of the influence social media could have on the business, Josh begun posting to Instagram, which eventually led to an influencer coming to the Baldwin Street site to make a custom sandwich for a video. As Kleiner describes it, it was a beastly buttie filled with Southern fried chicken and salami, among other things, and when it appeared online the traction it got was noticeable.
From there, Josh begun developing other creations including a chicken and chorizo combo designed to look like the England flag as a special for St George’s Day. The menu grew as the sandwiches did. Signature options like the coronation chicken and rare roast beef were joined by new regulars and specials, as well as a growing range of baked goods and hot options.
“I think Josh is a social media guru,” Kleiner says with a warm smile. “He’s such an inspiration to me and I like to think I am to him. He’s my best mate, and our relationship in the business works because we love each other’s company. Sure, we get stressed sometimes, but that’s because we both care so much, and we’re so immersed in it.”
Today, Sandwich Sandwich has 218,000 followers on Instagram, more than Pret (202,000 followers) and Subway UK (82,600 followers), arguably two of its closest high street rivals. Yet despite its burgeoning popularity on the platform, posts are infrequent with Josh focused more on engagement through Instagram’s Stories function. Indeed, so far this year Sandwich Sandwich has posted on its grid just three times, all in February. Since the page launched in November 2014, it has posted a total of 587 times – an average of just over a post a week.
“Our engagement is fantastic, but the reality is we don’t post that often at all,” says Kleiner. “When people call us a viral sensation, it’s not our doing, it is people reposting and influencers coming down and taking pictures and videos for their socials.
“It’s quality over quantity for us. Ultimately, if the product doesn’t match up when you eat it then it doesn’t matter how many followers you’ve got, you’re going to fail. By and large our quality stands up to the engagement levels we get, and that speaks to our success.
“We’re a Bristol business backed up with a genuine, wholesome family ethos and I think people gravitate towards that. On our first day in London, we had a queue of 130 people. There are places in London with around 20 locations with nowhere near the Instagram following we have. We have, fantastically, captured the imagination of people.”
Sandwich ‘eatability’
Today, the menu at Sandwich Sandwich features a range of breakfast and lunch sandwiches with fillings including sliced Southern fried chicken with house coleslaw and spicy Creole sauce; tuna crunch with sliced peppers, celery, red onion and mayonnaise; and a take on the chicken Kyiv with breaded chicken, pulled bacon, garlic, parmesan, herby soft cheese, caramelised red onions, cucumber and lettuce. Prices across the board are pitched at between £7 and £8, which may initially seem a lot for a sandwich, but feels pretty conservative in a world where a noticeably smaller club sandwich at Pret can cost around £6.
Kleiner describes the sandwich development as a ‘never-ending exercise’. “It’s all about the eatability. There’s no point having too much of one filling if it throws the ratios off and spoils the eating experience.
“Every filling is weighed and costed, and we’re still trying to pass as much value onto the customer as we can.”
It’s all about the eatability. There’s no point having too much of one filling if it throws the ratios off
So big are the sandwiches that I wonder whether anyone has ever suggested they may be too big to be considered a daily lunch option for office workers. In response, Kleiner notes that the group is preparing to start selling half sandwiches as a grab-and-go option to address just this. “Partly that’s to appeal to anyone with a smaller appetite, but it also allows guests to mix and match.
“Then you can have half a coronation chicken sandwich followed by half a roast beef one. That’s what I would do.”
While half of the menu never changes, there’s also a succession of revolving specials that feature. Options that are currently preparing to go on the menu include a Thai chicken filling; roast pork and crackling; and a steak sandwich.
Kleiner singles out the annual success of the group’s Christmas sandwich, a mix of cranberry sauce, thick cut bacon, sliced turkey breast, pulled turkey thigh, sage and onion sausage stuffing, herby mayonnaise, crispy onion and parma ham crumble, served with a pot of turkey gravy, as being a catalyst for the development new fillings and options. “It’s shown us that we should push harder to do regular specials.”
There’s also a growing appetite for Sandwich Sandwich’s hot food range, which now makes up around 30% of total sales. Signature options include the jerk chicken flatbread with sautéed onions, cheddar cheese, jalapeños and Creole sauce; the onion bhaji bun with vegan slaw, fresh spinach, mango chutney, vegan minty mayo and crushed poppadoms; and the ‘posh fish and chips’ bun (pictured above) with crispy battered cod, crushed minty peas, hash browns and tartar sauce.
New options in the pipeline include the brand’s version of the rib sandwich, which will feature a trio of onions and a sweetcorn puree dip.
Taking on the tourist hotspots
With both Gresham Street and Mark Lane, Sandwich Sandwich has focused its London growth so far on areas with robust office footfall, but Kleiner now believes it can move into more prime central locations, as it has in Bristol. “We were always focused on office-centric site, but now we’re ready for the West End. Weekends are busy here, despite there being no office workers. We’ve become a destination.”
From his seat he gestures outside and down the street: “Pret doesn’t open on Sundays down here.”
In terms of expansion in London, Kleiner has a five-year ambition to grow to 20 sites, with a further three openings planned for this year. “We’re in a hurry and want to put a foot down on the accelerator,” he says. “We’re in this vortex of popularity at the moment and we want to capitalise on that. Keeping up with momentum is a big focus for us, which is tough as finding locations and getting them open as quickly as you’d like is the biggest challenge.”
We’re in this vortex of popularity at the moment and we want to capitalise on that
As well as larger flagship sites, future openings will include smaller grab-and-go only units, a nod to the success of the pre-made sandwich shelves that were introduced in Gresham Street soon after launch. “That’s the future. We may even open one of those sites this year. Our brand is strong enough in London now to dip our toes in the water with a model like that.”
It’s not just London where Sandwich Sandwich is plotting growth either, with the group currently in advanced talks about a franchise agreement that would see Sandwich Sandwich open three sites in Dubai. “We have discussions, we talk to everyone. It costs nothing to talk. We’ve trademarked our name in the US, Canada, Europe and South Africa, and we’re currently doing the same for the UAE and Gulf states. It’s about building the foundations for the future.”
What about further UK growth? Kleiner rules out expansion into Manchester, the city du jour for London-based groups looking to expand northwards, saying he’s happy to leave that market to other operators. But he does hint that there may be plans to take Sandwich Sandwich to other cities. “There’s an appetite to go beyond London, but what that looks like we don’t know,” he says.
“We’re focused on this five-year plan right, who knows what’s beyond that. I don’t want to get carried away. I’m living in the here and now and trying to now get too carried away as that’s a dangerous thing. I’m determined to just overcome what’s in front of me.”