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Birmingham local Brandon Stewart hopes to reopen 3 Jimmy John’s downtown locations
It’s simple physics: it’s impossible to get subs so fast you’ll freak if you don’t have a Jimmy John’s near you. If you’re in Birmingham proper, that statement applies to you … for now. While Jimmy John’s downtown, Five Points South and Lakeview locations recently closed, another local franchisee, Brandon Stewart, hopes to reopen them soon.
Jimmy John’s Downtown Locations in Question
- Downtown: 323 20th St North, Birmingham, AL 35203 (currently closed)
- Five Points South: 1919 11th Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35205 (currently closed, pictured in the Instagram post below)
- Lakeview: 2808 7th Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35233 (currently closed)
Of course, there are restaurants aplenty in all of these Birmingham food hotspots. Downtown, only a block away, the newly remodeled Brick and Tin just reopened. Then there’s Five Points South, which is in the midst of a food and entertainment revival.
Finally, there’s Lakeview, home to a bevy of restaurants and bars, among them the original Slice Pizza & Brew, Babalu, Seeds Coffee Co. and (coming soon) Automatic Seafood and Oysters.
However, sometimes you just get a Jimmy John’s craving. It’s cheap, fast and tasty—especially on the rare $1 Sub Customer Appreciation Day, which usually comes around once a year. So what are downtown Birmingham Jimmy John’s fans to do?
Plans to Reopen
Enter Brandon Stewart, a Birmingham-based Jimmy John’s franchisee with 10 Alabama locations—including Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Inverness, the Colonnade and Trussville—and 52 total across the Southeast.
Though he is not privy to the details of why the original franchisee closed the three downtown locations, he hopes to reopen all of them.
“(The Jimmy John’s downtown locations) fit right into our footprint. We can definitely use those stores to serve the downtown market.”
Stewart
The process of reopening each location requires the collaboration of four parties, Stewart said. Those include Stewart, Jimmy John’s, the landlord of each location and land lenders for the assets within each store.
“It’s not all going to happen at once. It’s probably going to be one by one to open back up, but we’re pretty excited about it.”
Stewart
Stewart is a Georgia native who graduated with a degree in finance from UGA in 2006. (Go Dawgs. Sorry, guys. Sometimes I got to let my Georgia colors fly. ) Before landing in Birmingham, he worked in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then in Boston. His Boston employer, a private equity firm, was invested in Jimmy John’s, which sparked Stewart’s interest in becoming a franchisee.
So why Birmingham? Stewart and his wife moved to Birmingham in 2010 because of its proximity to his hometown in Georgia and hers in Florida. He opened his very first Jimmy John’s here in 2011. Recently, he was one of three franchisees elected to the Jimmy John’s Franchisee Advisory Council for the 2018-2020 term.
