On a Roll

Written by Tracie Grimes

Some people have a plan when they pack up, leave the only home they’ve ever known, and hit the road to start a new life.

Not Michelle Leveroni. With a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State, a new car, $1,300 dollars in the bank, a well-cut business suit, and her new best friend Brady (a Husky-mix puppy and “the smartest dog ever”), Michelle decided to head West, in search of sunshine and success.

“Employed” may not have been the first adjective that described Michelle as she pulled away from her parents’ Michigan home, and a course of action (or even thoughts as to where she was going to live) may not have been sketched out, but the self-sufficient, hard-working 20-something wasn’t worried. Sure, she knew failure was most certainly a risk, but so what?

“Ah, the fearlessness of youth is a wonderful thing,” sighs Michelle, now 25 years later and at the peak of her entrepreneurial success as the owner of 17 local Subway Sandwich franchises.

Looking back at her decision to just head out and see what happened along the way, Michelle takes a moment to reflect.

“Was I nervous? Was I scared? Not really. But would I want my 17-year-old daughter [Bridget] to do what I did? Not really,” Michelle smiles. “I know now why my mom wasn’t home when I pulled out of the driveway that day; she stayed away on purpose because she was scared to death for me! But I’d been wanting to live someplace warm since I got out of high school (those Michigan winters can kill a person!), looking into going away to college, but realized I couldn’t afford to pay out-of-state college tuition, so I decided that it was ‘now or never’ after graduation.”

So with no particular destination in mind, just a plan to stop over at friends’ houses for a couple of nights in Missouri and New Mexico, then making a stop in San Diego, Michelle decided somewhere along the way that Santa Barbara might be a good place to call home.

“But I couldn’t find a hotel in Santa Barbara that would take my dog, so I headed back to San Diego.”

Feeling discouraged for the first time since she started out on her “excellent adventure,” Michelle called her mom.

“I was pretty home-sick and Mom could tell that I just really needed to be around a family, so she made a call, told me to call Sue and Bill Brine, and Sue gave me directions to meet her at a church. I’ll never forget that she told me to get off on El Cajon Boulevard, and me, being from Michigan and not knowing the spelling of the Spanish names around southern California, was looking for El Kahone Boulevard—just like it sounds.”

Michelle eventually found her way through the foreign-sounding streets of San Diego, and with a little help from her friends, the Brines, she found a hotel that would accommodate both her and her canine companion.

“I rented a typewriter, started sending out resumes, and landed my first post-graduate job at Cox Cable in San Diego.”

That’s where she met her future husband, Pete Leveroni.

Their romance was in full bloom when Cox decided to transfer Pete to Bakersfield. Michelle decided Bakersfield was calling her name, too.

“I don’t think Pete was too happy when I told him I was moving, too, but he got used to it. And my parents...they thought I had lost my mind to quit a well-paying, steady job to move to a strange town with this guy I hadn’t known for that long. But they knew me, knew it was a risk I was willing to take.”

At some point it dawned on Michelle that she’d probably need some source of income as she and Pete began their life in Bakersfield. She’d been pondering this one day when Pete came home.

“He walked in the door and I gave him a big ‘hello’ kiss. He smelled delicious! I asked him what he’d been eating that smelled so good, and he said, ‘Oh, it must be the Subway sandwich I had at lunch.’

“I had never heard of Subway before, and was intrigued. Pete said, ‘Hey, I don’t think there are any Subways in Bakersfield,’ and now Pete tries to take the credit for coming up with the idea of opening up a Subway in Bakersfield,” Michelle laughs.

But while being the first on the block, so to speak, and introducing a new business to a city may lead to entrepreneurial success, it also involves taking a few pretty big risks: financing the new venture and marketing the product, just to name two.

“Mom and Dad had recently had some good luck on a piece of property they owned; they struck oil, kinda like in The Beverly Hillbillies,” Michelle chuckles. “They gave each of us kids a portion, and I decided I’d use mine to open a Subway in Bakersfield. My parents let me borrow the rest of the money I needed. I insisted on setting up a payment schedule because paying my own way is very important to me. So financing was taken care of.”

Marketing the product was a bit more of a challenge, Michelle recalls, because most people had no idea that Subway was a sandwich business.

“Back in 1984 there were less than 500 Subways in the whole country, so when I started telling people I was opening up a Subway franchise in Bakersfield, they’d look at me like I was crazy and say, ‘You’re going to build a subway in Bakersfield?’”

Never one to back away from a challenge and a little hard work, Michelle decided to take on the risk of opening a business people weren’t really sure about.

“I didn’t really stop to think about it. I knew I was a hard worker, and I’ve always loved making sandwiches, so I just jumped in.”

And boy did she jump in! Michelle chose the Oak Street location for her first store (which is still open), even knowing that renovation was going to be a huge undertaking.

“I was there all day and well into the night getting the place ready to open. You name it, I did it—laying tile, grouting, painting—heck, Pete and I even put together the walk-ins in that store. But we were ready to open for business!”

Fatigued from her weeks of hard labor, not to mention the fact that she didn’t get any sleep during her first 24 hours in business, Michelle decided to fly home to Michigan for a visit with her parents and a little R & R. Exhausted, she had to get back on the plane in a wheelchair, and her doctor admitted her directly to the hospital once she got back to Bakersfield.

“I thought I was just tired from working myself to death to get the store open, but it turned out I had Valley Fever.”

After weathering a rough start like that, Michelle has been well equipped for the ups and downs the sandwich business has taken her through over the past 25 years. And being the kind of person that isn’t inclined to wake up every morning saying, “Okay, I’m going to do this,” or “Gee, here I am, a woman who’s starting out a business that’s brand new to Bakersfield; I wonder if I’m going to make it,” Michelle decided it was onward and upward for her Subway franchises.

“I’m not the kind of person who ‘tests the waters.’ It’s more like ‘jump in the deep end and plug your nose,’” Michelle laughs. “I never thought twice about opening a second store; I just knew I was going to do it not only because there was room for more Subways in Bakersfield, but because I knew I would be successful.

“You know, I’ve opened about 40 stores and have been making thousands of sandwiches a week over the past 25 years, have had some pretty awful things happen to me along the way, but I’ve had a great time. But if I had let the fear of taking risks stop me, I would have missed out on life. I feel like I’ve been a part of so many lives. I’ve seen a lot of kids who used to come by in their little dance leotards grow up and I’ve employed thousands of local people over the years, most of whom have become part of my family. I take what I do very seriously. I just really think God had a plan for me to do this and I pray to Him every night for strength and wisdom. Then I wake up in the morning and just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other,” she says with a smile.

And as she looks down the road at the next 25 years, Michelle realizes her future path looks much like it did when she started out.

“I really don’t have a clear cut plan for the next 25 years,” Michelle says thoughtfully. “At one time I had all these grandiose plans of selling by the time I was 40. But as I sit here looking 50 in the eye, I realize I don’t really have an exit strategy. I love making sandwiches, love the flexibility my career gives me to spend time and be there for Pete and our three kids; why would I want out?

“So who needs a plan when starting out in life? Risk is an inherent part of living,” Michelle points out.

“Life is a risk. You just have to be flexible enough to allow yourself to figure things out along the way.”

Article appeared in our 26-2 Issue - June 2009

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