DANBURY (Conn.) — Peter Buck’s $1,000 purchase in a Connecticut sandwich shop in 1965 was the genesis of what is now the largest restaurant chain in the world — Subway. He was 90.
Subway stated that Buck, a nuclear physicist, was killed in Danbury, Connecticut on Nov. 18. His cause of death was not revealed.
Fred DeLuca, a family friend, had asked Buck at 17 how he could earn some money to pay for college. Buck’s answer? You can open a sandwich shop.
DeLuca and he opened “Pete’s Super Submarines”, Bridgeport in 1965. The most expensive sandwich sold for 69 cents.
Three years later, the duo changed their name to Subway and decided to make it a franchise by franchising. This would eventually make them both billionaires. Forbes put Buck’s net worth to be $1.7 billion. DeLuca, who was 67 years old, died in 2015.
Subway claims it has over 40,000 locations around the world, surpassing McDonald’s and Starbucks.
Buck stated to The Wall Street Journal that “we didn’t make any profit for 15 years.”
When asked if he thought the chain would grow so large, he replied that he had always believed it would. However, he didn’t know a specific number.
Buck, a physicist was hired by General Electric at a Schenectady laboratory, New York in 1957. He worked on U.S. Navy ships and submarines atomic power plants. According to his family’s obituary, he later worked at United Nuclear in White Plains (New York) and Nuclear Energy Services, Danbury. He made his home in Danbury.
He was also a philanthropist and made significant donations to many organisations, including the Smithsonian Institution. In 2004, he donated a 23-carat ruby that was named after his second wife, Carmen Lucia Buck.
