FREEDOM OF SPEECH

CHECK OUT THIS NEW SANDWICH JOINT

By Nancy Weingartner | Franchise Times
Published: April 1st, 2005

Cheba Hut’s management team doesn’t mind if you laugh with the concept. In fact, they encourage customers to have fun when ordering a sandwich named after various types of marijuana such as White widow and Silver Haze- but don’t we expect to get permission to stand outside the sandwich shop and get signatures for a petition to legalize pot.

“We don’t want to get into the politics,” says Kyle Dakota, director of franchise sales for the mesa, AZ based sub sandwich concept.

Cheba, by the way, for those of you who missed the 60’s, not to mention the 70’s , is one of 200 slang terms for marijuana.. The founder of the concept heard the term on a trip to Jamaica and decided it would be a smokin’ name for a sandwich shop, “where the only thing fried is the occasional customer”-their trademarked tag line.

Rarely do they hear any criticism about the theme of the restaurant, Dakota says, because most of the people understand it’s just a joke. But, that doesn’t mean that they are not paying attention to the quality of the sandwiches. They have set sandwiches, such as the Jamaican Red with grilled chicken breast, green peppers, jalapenos, olives and cheese to original combinations.

“If you have a fun concept and bad food, then you’re just a bad joke,” Dakota points out.

To-go sandwiches used to be wrapped in foil with both ends twisted shut, until the cost of foil made that little authentic touch uneconomical.

The only down side is that they can’t sponsor youth sports, Dakota says.

We’re guessing everyone has some marketing ideas for Cheba Hut, but we can’t resist. Here are ours:

1. Have all the counter people wear name tags with “Mary Jane” as their names.
2. Combo meals include a stick of incense.
3. Get rid of 100 % cotton t-shirts, use hemp T-shirts.
While Dakota says they don’t take themselves too seriously, we wonder about another group we discovered on the website: The Consortium for higher Education Benchmarking Analysts (CHEBA). Which makes you wonder if someone in the otherwise dry-sounding group has a sense of humor.