Pro CHEFS TASTE TEST STORE BOUGHT TOMATO SAUCE
A good Cheeseburger is better than a good Steak, Lamb Chop, or any other form of Meat.
The title says it all. A good cheeseburger is the best meat based meal on the planet. The combination of the meat, cheese, and a good bun is a perfect combination. A single steak with seasoning and sauce really doesn't compare. Lamb chops, lobster, ham, or any other kind of meat you can think of just doesn't compare.
I'm not talking about fast food garbage or some inferior diner burger. But a good cheeseburger with a fresh bun (the most important piece) and high grade meat.
As if it were an old, reclusive celebrity, a coworker asked, "Does Blimpie's still exist?" Yes, yes, Blimpie is still alive and, presumably, well. At the very least, there are still plenty in NYC. While we associate the sandwich franchise with 1990s strip malls, did you know one of the first shops opened here in the 1960s? Here it is, your short and probably totally unnecessary history of Blimpie.
First of all, Blimpie is called that because one of the founders, Tony Conza, didn't like the sounds of "subs." Conza, along Peter DeCarlo and Angelo Bandassare, opened their first shop in Hoboken in 1964, and apparently people in the area weren't familiar with the term "hoagie," so that was out, too. As the legend goes, Conza found "blimpie" while flipping through a dictionary, and felt it was appropriate.
"BLIMPIE" - A BRIEF HISTORY
Blimpie began its journey on the Jersey side of the Hudson River when 3 high school pals teamed up after graduation to develop it with $2,500 in funding, They opened the first Blimpie at the corner of Seventh and Washington Streets in Hoboken, N.J., according to NJ.com.
The year was 1964, and Blimpie didn't want to sound like just another submarine sandwich company — a factor that factored into its name. Scouring a dictionary, Blimpie's young brain trust was quickly drawn to the word '"blimp" and the accompanying picture that they felt resembled the bread of a submarine sandwich (per QSR).
The ship-to-sub comparison was apt enough for founders Tony Conza, Peter DeCarlo, and Angelo Baldassare, who approved a name that would see the company long past its first location. That being said, Blimpie's first sandwich shop no longer exists.
Blimpie's ideological foundation was first laid out during a party conversation between founders Tony Conza, Peter DeCarlo, and Angelo Baldassare in Jersey City, N.J. According to the New York Times, the atmosphere and accompanying drinks catalyzed a brainstorm of business ideas. Unsure of what kind of venture to start, the future Blimpie founders tossed around concepts until they eventually settled on the idea of a sandwich shop.
Blimpie's belief that this concept could work was backed by the success of Mike's Submarines in Point Pleasant, N.J., a place that was typically bursting with patronage. Intrigued by its popularity, Blimpie's founders performed some culinary espionage by eating some of Mike's Subs. Impressed by what they ate, they opened their own sandwich shop in a similar vein. Mimicking their mentor proved a sage choice, as both sandwich chains still exist today. There is one exception, though — Mike's Submarines is now known as Jersey Mike's.
Long before "move fast and break things" became a popular startup motto, Blimpie was stirring up dust and drywall in the 1960s. Aggressively gunning for expansion, the founders of Blimpie exploded their base readily. By 1967, they had successfully expanded into Manhattan, with 10 Blimpies already churning out hoagie-style Subs.
Four of these franchises were owned by founders Tony Conza and Peter DeCarlo, and although it may not sound like much in our age of easy venture capital, running 4 Blimpies back then proved more than Conza and DeCarlo could handle.
Unable to keep lightning in the bottle without a formal business education, Conza and DeCarlo were flying by the seat of their pants. Per the New York Times, Conza and DeCarlo "admitted they weren't skilled businessmen." As it turned out, they were "incautious about the costs of goods and employee salaries."
Conza and DeCarlo would bend but would not fold, selling all 4 Blimpies they personally owned. They shifted their focus on building back Blimpie's bottom line through franchising.
In 1976 BLIMPIE SPLIT Into TWO COMPANIES
It's tough to keep even the best teams together, and the Blimpie crew was no exception. Citing a difference in opinion, as DeCarlo wanted to keep Blimpie East Coast and Conza wanted to expand southward, the original founders decided to reform Blimpie into 2 distinct companies under the same trademark.
It was decided DeCarlo would run Blimpie Metropolitan and retain control of the majority of Blimpie's New York, New Jersey, and East Coast locations. Conza would head the original company, but renamed it International Blimpie Corporation while crafting a new imprint. Conza relished the opportunity and quickly franchised Blimpies "wherever there was interest," according to the New York Times. Conza would eventually admit the error of his ways, and over the years, many of those locations damaged the brand before closing down. They allegedly drove customers up the wall with filthy bathrooms and discordant employees.
Blimpie went public in 1983
In the blur of Blimpie's forced growth throughout the 70s and 80s, they also sought public investment. Blimpie's rise was rapid, but stores were closing rapidly as well (via Reference for Business). It's clear the underwriter held reservations, as Blimpie's initial public offering debuted at 90 cents per share — an unpromising number, even when adjusted for inflation. It served as a flashing indicator that the 80s would bring turbulent times for this blimp-inspired brand.
Blimpie's aggressive expansion also resulted in marks against sanitation. Founder Tony Conza's loose approach to franchising led to undisciplined franchisees and resulted in a massive identity crisis for the Blimpie brand. According to the New York Times, Blimpie had such "renegade owners" who flouted their business formula that some bad actors even sold Chinese food and pizza. However, there was a silver lining — these maverick moves were also a cry for help, begging Blimpie to expand its menu. It became an idea it pursued in the following decade.
If you've ever wondered why Subway is so enormous, a big part of that may be Blimpie's decision to pump the brakes on its best product in the 1980s: the sub sandwich.
As Subway made moves in the submarine sandwich sector, Blimpie pivoted toward a sit-down restaurant idea that became the Border Cafe (via the New York Times). It was a short-lived endeavor that hemorrhaged funds shortly after striking ground in Manhattan. Although Border Cafe's initial numbers were promising, not even former New York Yankee great Dave Winfield could save them as a partial owner (via Reference for Business). However, that was the small problem. The big problem? Blimpie gave Subway an inch and it took a mile. It padded a sandwich-selling lead that only grew wider and would never again be threatened by Blimpie.
If you've ever wondered why Subway is so enormous, a big part of that may be Blimpie's decision to pump the brakes on its best product in the 1980s: the sub sandwich.
As Subway made moves in the submarine sandwich sector, Blimpie pivoted toward a sit-down restaurant idea that became the Border Cafe (via the New York Times). It was a short-lived endeavor that hemorrhaged funds shortly after striking ground in Manhattan. Although Border Cafe's initial numbers were promising, not even former New York Yankee great Dave Winfield could save them as a partial owner (via Reference for Business). However, that was the small problem. The big problem? Blimpie gave Subway an inch and it took a mile. It padded a sandwich-selling lead that only grew wider and would never again be threatened by Blimpie.
It can be hard to remember, but coffee isn’t just a delicious liquid drug — at its most basic level, it’s a plant that people sow, grow, and harvest. There are plenty of kinds of coffee, too, and none as significant on the global market as coffee canephora, also known as robusta. That’s one of the hardiest, most caffeinated varieties of coffee. And while its counterpart arabica gets more attention for having a wider flavor profile, robusta is far less likely to be classified as “specialty” coffee. Both kinds’ global popularity is thanks to Europe’s carving up of coffee-growing regions such as East Africa and Southeast Asia for export: The Dutch taking coffee to Indonesia and enslaving locals is how we got the now-common term “java,” for example.
Political theorist Carl Schmitt called such adventures in mercantilism the beginning of the “Eurocentric nomos of the Earth” — he’d know, given his support of the Nazi party. Thanks to coloniality, numerous commodities like coffee became associated with Europe. In brief, naval travel and military technology allowed Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch conquerors to leverage the addictive crop as one more line item in a growing global ledger. Propaganda supported the expansion. There was Edwin Lester Linden Arnold’s handbook for coffee growing in 1886, published one year after the Berlin Conference began cutting up Africa into new districts, and J.W.B. Money’s Java; or, How to Manage a Colony. Both treat the people harvesting large-commodity crops including coffee as inferior, which means coffee and subjugation go hand in hand.
The next generation of imperialists including the young United States took to these lessons and examples to enslave people the world over for their own sugar, spice, tea, and coffee. Take the Belgians’ colonization of the Congo in the late 1800s, a premier region for rubber and robusta coffee. It was the Belgians who named robusta coffee as such due to its “robust” resilience to pestilence. Locals were worked to death, often from exhaustion but also from acts of violence at the hands of Belgian exporters and guards. And, as Adam Hochschild writes in King Leopold’s Ghost, Africans were not to be paid in francs for their labor, instead receiving cloth, beads, and brass rods. “Money in free circulation might undermine what was essentially a command economy,” Hochschild writes.
The impacts of these actions live on. Burundi — also colonized by Europe — is today one of, if not the, poorest country in the world and depends heavily on coffee exports. According to Standart magazine, the government tightly controls seed allowances, pays farmers only once or twice a year, and mandates that farmers sell their coffee as a low-grade commodity rather than a specialty. Vietnam, which has suffered numerous invasions over generations, is the second-largest coffee producer behind Brazil. And El Salvador’s political unrest and civil war in the 1980s can be traced back to the early occupation of coffee barons, including James Hill, an English businessman who became one of the country’s most infamous coffee oligarchs.
No matter the ruination, the United States was eager for coffee to become part of its social fabric from the jump, and ingrained it has become. There’s evidence that suggests that coffee came to the East Coast in 1607 with English captain John Smith, and the drink became a backbone of the young new empire. A few centuries later, around the middle of the 20th century, the coffee break became a thing thanks to a greedy tie factory owner in Denver. In 1962, the International Coffee Agreements was established — actually a stabilizing move thanks to mandatory quotas on coffee imports — only to be blown up in 1989 amid market share disputes among producers and changing consumer tastes. Through it all, coffee burrowed deeper and deeper into the United States’ psyche.
Which is to say, diner coffee is, really, the improbable marriage of low prices and a hungry market. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the first attempt at a diner came from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1872 in the form of a horse-drawn wagon serving cheap, hot food to people looking for late-night eats. And by 1924, the name for the “rolling restaurants” and “dining cars” became shortened to diner. As these casual restaurants multiplied (long before anything was even considered “ethical” or “fair trade certified”), coffee emerged as a cheap, on-demand menu staple. That coffee became part and parcel of Americana is thanks to these historical events, the rise of restaurants in the country writ large, and, of course, public relations. See: Denny’s partnership with Major League Baseball, chimerically combining the dark elixir, baseball, and Americana on color TV.
With the rise of Equal Exchange and fair trade certification in the 1980s and the proliferation of coffee chains around the world that have fueled consumer tastes for ever-higher quality products, coffee is continuing to evolve. As of 2023, Fairtrade International upped its minimum purchase per pound for certified coffee to $1.80, coffee workers at Starbucks and Peet’s locations throughout the country are unionizing for better pay and conditions, and fourth-wave coffee, with all of its possibilities, is either just over the horizon or already here (depending on whom you ask). But diner coffee, and the low-quality sourcing and methods used in its production, falls well outside of all that progress. It’s a relic in time, an artifact of an America not unlike the restaurants it’s poured in that are still somehow super cheap.
In truth, diner coffee can’t really change. There’s virtually no demand for that coffee to taste better, and supply for the commodity-grade staple is as abundant (for now) as it is unethical. As Michael Pollan might prescribe, drink coffee you can trace, drink only as much as you can afford to buy that is thoughtfully sourced, and buy mostly from small and direct-purchasing farms. But as the botanist also concedes, sometimes you still crave an Oreo.
On a spring afternoon in Sedona, Arizona, the Coffee Pot Restaurant is somehow as busy as many diners would hope to be during the morning rush. Servers in bright red T-shirts and aprons chat beneath southwestern motifs and rockscape paintings. Hiking through Red Rock State Park just outside of town can really sap your energy. So while there are vortexes that might refill that void, a damn fine cup of coffee also does the job.
But for all the health-focused marketing throughout the touristy town, Sedona hosts more places to get your aura photo taken than cafes with transparently sourced, fairly purchased coffee. So, Coffee Pot’s $3.75 cup of coffee will have to do.
No, it isn’t good for the planet. Or, most likely, for workers. But when there’s nothing much better around, and when the nostalgia hits, a cup of jet-black, bitter diner coffee remains an affordable, bottomless delight.
