Potbelly Sandwiches Expanding to Seattle
A Craigslist help-wanted ad posted this weekend portends that some wildly popular toasted sandwiches, sugar cookies and milkshakes with a teeny tiny cookie on the straw could be headed to Seattle.
Chicago-based chain Potbelly Sandwich Shop is seeking managers to help the company open a store here in Seattle. If the post is to be believed, the store will be located somewhere downtown, a logical choice given Potbelly's worker bee customer base in other cities.
Lunch-hour customers wait in long lines to order from a basic menu of about 10 sandwiches, with a few soups and salads thrown in. The streamlined menu helps Potbelly maintain a reputation for crazy fast-moving lies. You may be 20 people away from the register, but don't start zoning out on your smart phone; you need to be ready when the polite but assertive sandwich-making team asks you to shout your order their way.
The menu of milkshakes, malts and smoothies is nearly as long as the sandwich list, and every ice cream drink comes with a tiny cookie encircling the straw.
According to the Potbelly legend, its founders opened an antique store in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood back in 1977. Owners decided to sell some sandwiches on the side, heating them in the store's antique potbelly stove. That whole "antique store" plan then got shunted to the side when patrons instead went crazy for the sandwiches.
We are trying to get in touch with the company to find out more details about when and where this Seattle location might be (and we can't wait for Sheehan's inevitable formal review in Seattle Weekly). Potbelly's sandwiches are damn good, but let's see if they can hold their own against the many excellent sandwich places cropping up around the city (but mostly in Pioneer Square).
You can get a full debriefing on last week's restaurant news right over here.
