Bill Greene Sr. talks about the Oswego Sub Shop, which is celebrating 55 years this year. Shop averages about 3,500 to 4,000 subs a week
By Stefan Yablonski
The Oswego Sub Shop is a family affair, stretching back three generations. Bill Greene Sr.’s father – affectionately called “Pops” by his staff – ran a sub shop in Brockport for a few years before opening Oswego Sub Shop in 1969. Bill Sr. ran the place for more than 30 years before making way for his son, Bill Jr. We sat down with Bill Sr. recently and he shared the shop’s tale.
Q: How did it all start?
A: My father’s first sub shop was in Brockport. So when I came home from Vietnam in ’68, I worked nights and weekends making subs, delivering subs. And I worked at Lincoln Rochester in the city of Rochester. I was working days at the bank and working nights and weekends for my father.
Q: Sounds like you were very busy
A: Yes. Then I got married and I had to quit one of them. So I quit my father. When I left he said he didn’t want to do it any more. My sister and her husband lived in Greece; they wanted to get into the sub business.
Q: How did the Oswego shop come to be?
A: My uncle, who ran the Syracuse-Oswego bus lines, told my father this place was coming up for sale even though it wasn’t on the market yet. It was an insurance agency. My father bought this place — remodeled it. My sister and my brother-in-law came in with him. That was in September of 1969. By December my father decided he didn’t want to be in Oswego. So I said I’d buy half. So I bought him out and moved here in May of ’70. By that November, I bought my brother-in-law out. I owned it by myself for the next 34 years.
Q: And then you sold it to your son, Bill Jr.?
A: That’s when I sold out to my oldest son. Bill Jr. took over the shop in 2002 but he had been involved in management since 1994. He worked here as a teenager cleaning on weekends, then delivering and working the counter as he got older.
He opened Greene’s Ale House across the street, which he owned and operated until 2002.
Q: Do you know about how much you’ve invested here?
A: Oh, my goodness, with what my son put in to here, it’s a lot of money I’ll tell you that. It’s been more than 20 years, so I would say back then it was probably $150,000 — but in today’s market you’d have to at least double that.
Q: How many employees do you have?
A: We have 36 employees. It’s been pretty solid. We have a problem with turnover; the young kids don’t want to work. We have two girls that have been here 35 years or more each. It’s hard to find people like that today, really hard.
Q: How busy are you on an average week?
A: We average about 3,500 to 4,000 subs a week.
Q: So, what’s the most popular sub?
A: Turkey. Turkey has always been our No. 1 seller, always. No matter what year, what time of day — 95% of the time it’s turkey. Cheeseburger is our second best. We go through a lot of hamburg; probably about 400 pounds in a week.
Q: The shop has been enlarged?
A: Yes. We added a bakery and storage space in 2008. We only had three tables back when we started. Then we had only 10 subs on the menu. My son expanded the menu big time. We sell a lot of salads and we sell a lot of wings, too. When I sold out to my son, [the place] needed fresh blood and I’m happy with the way things have gone. My son brought in new ideas and expanded; it definitely needed an upgrade.
Q: So you bake your own bread?
A: We bake our own bread and baked goods. We shop for meats — wherever we can get the best price — we always buy the best product. We cook our own roast beef here every day, which nobody else does. It is trimmed before we get it, so there is hardly any waste. We cook our own meatballs from scratch. We get our onions from Dunsmoors. We buy other onions too, but the jumbo red is what we use mostly on the subs. I mix our own oil. I have been doing that since 1970. Make my own oil — my own recipe. Nobody else has that but us. It’s a secret. We guard that pretty good. Nobody is around when I mix it up. I mix 18 gallons on average every week. We do a lot of our own stuff. We don’t scrimp — that’s what makes us different from everybody else.
Q: Is the college a big part of your business?
A: The college, of course, is big for us when it is in session. But in the summer we get a lot of transient people who have moved away and they come back. We have had people in here from Texas, Boston — all over the country. People come back to Oswego and one of the first things they do is come over to the sub shop. They say, “We’ve been thinking about this a long time. We miss it.” It’s a testimonial. It’s incredible.
Q: Are you doing anything special to celebrate 55 years?
A: We are in our 55th year. We had a 50th anniversary. Back in the old days, when I had my 15-year and 20-year, I rolled the prices back to what it was when we first opened and we had people lined up all the way down the street. When we first opened up a whole sub was $1.10 and a half was 69 cents.
Q: Are you still working?
A: I work three days a week here, around 24 hours. What kills me [laughs] I’m collecting Social Security and paying into Social Security at the same time. Something wrong with that picture, ya know?
Q: This is a family business, fathers and sons.
A: I also have two daughters. They both worked here when they were growing up, but they didn’t stick around. I didn’t think I’d be here this long, either. When I took over for my dad I thought about going someplace else — but once I started having kids, my roots kept getting deeper and deeper. When I retired a few years ago I moved to where I grew up down in the Southern Tier. Then my grandkids started playing hockey and we’d come back to see them on weekends. It’s a three-hour drive one way. That got pretty old, so we sold out and we moved back here.
Q: Are the grandkids the next generation at the shop?
A: My youngest grandson is sophomore in high school. He just got his driver’s license. He works a little bit now and then. But he’s not sure if he will take over. If he doesn’t, I’m not sure what will happen after that.
Q: Someone once said “If you bought a sub in 1969 and you bought one today, it’s the same thing.”
A: [Smiles] That would be me. Everything’s the same. We buy top shelf, we buy the best. And every sub made — my motto is you make every sub as if you are going to sit down and eat it. If you bought a sub in 1969, you can get the exact same sub today — the recipe is the same and it is still made with fresh ingredients. We slice the meats daily, dice and chop vegetables daily. We feel that’s what keeps us ahead of our competitors.
Q: The sign outside used to display a caricature of your father in a sub roll. What ever became of it?
A: I can’t tell you how many hundreds of people over the years stopped to take pictures of that sign. It was unique. When I sold out to my son, he changed the logo and everything.
Q: So what happened to the sign?
A: I’ve got half of it in my garage and my son has the other half in his garage.
