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Dagwood's deli dream will come to life

The comic strip character whose eating habits are legend will lend his name to a chain of sandwich shops.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published May 5, 2006

He - or, more accurately, his real-life creator, Dean Young - will be opening a chain of sandwich shops soon.

"I've been dreaming of doing this since I was a college student,'' said Young, 66.

Young, who works from a studio on Clearwater Beach, has had a team of 15 fast-food restaurant veterans quietly working in their "secret hideaway'' for months on Dagwood's Sandwich Shoppes.

The office door is plastered with yellow ''caution," "security clearance'' and "'do not enter'' warnings amid the signs of a construction site, but vice chairman and chief executive officer Lamar Berry, a longtime chief marketing officer with Popeye's Fried Chicken, confirmed the company began selling the first of 106 area development franchises this week.

Bumstead, the comic strip's bumbling son of a railroad tycoon who was disinherited and sentenced to a modest life after he married a libertine flapper named Blondie in 1933, has been synonymous with sandwich-building for decades. He's always piling up cold cuts and cheeses precariously balanced in one hand. In fact, the Dagwood sandwich is a word common enough to be found in many dictionaries.

Dagwood's licensed cartoon face appears on everything from lunch boxes to coffee cups. He has done endorsement duty for A&W root beer, Sargento Cheese, FedEx and a line of cold cuts. There's even a small Blondie's theme restaurant at the Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando.

"But this is not a licensing deal,'' Berry said. "This is the alter ego of Dagwood stepping out in real life to do something he's dreamed of for 30 years.''

Berry and Young gathered 15 investors who helped get the venture off the ground.

The company plans to unveil the entire plan in a press event May 11, but Berry confirmed the basics Thursday for the first store, slated to open in a Palm Harbor strip shopping center in June.

Individual stores will be small, 32-seat affairs decorated with themed characters from the Blondie strip. The menu is dominated by $4 to $5 fresh-made sandwiches and wraps including a signature pressed Cuban, New York deli-style pastrami, New Orleans roast beef "Po' Boy" and a chicken curry sandwich on toasted raisin swirl bread. All the breads are partially baked, then finished on site.

Young, who once said he has a "black belt in buffet,'' contributed a drawer full of recipes that were turned over to executive chef Geoffrey Rhodes for fine-tuning.

Started in 1930 by Young's father, Chic Young, Blondie today appears in 2,300 publications in 35 countries that have a potential audience of 280-million.

But Dagwood's entry in the fresh-made sandwich business will be in the fastest-growing segment of the quick-serve food business. It's a corner already jammed with Subway, Blimpie and Quizno's. Other entrepreneurs are flocking there, too, including some of the creators of Hard Rock Cafe. Their entry enlisted the British Earl of Sandwich for their Earl of Sandwich that opened recently in International Plaza in Tampa.

Berry knows Dagwood's reputation will draw crowds, but the chain's fate will be decided by the quality of the food.

"We have a menu that will make people ravenous to come back over and over,'' he said, adding that, of course, there will be a Dagwood sandwich piled with 1.5 pounds of cold cuts.

"It's a foot-high,'' Berry said.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified May 5, 2006, 05:56:44]