The Big Changes Coming To Jersey Mike's In 2026

Jersey Mike's is pretty great just as it is, but the company is planning on a few changes to make it even better in 2026. There has been a switch-up in leadership, which often brings changes — and not always good ones. However, we're optimistic that the team leading the company forward after the founder's retirement in 2025 is simply tweaking a good thing rather than making drastic shifts that will leave customers wishing Jersey Mike's were the way it used to be.

You'll still get freshly made deli sandwiches and all the great meats and toppings you've always enjoyed, but the company is expanding into new locations, trying to appeal to a wider demographic, and funding its business in new ways. You should also expect a few menu additions. However, if what we've seen so far in 2026 is any indication, those menu additions probably won't be grandiose changes but rather brilliant remixes of what customers already love. All that said, we think that the big changes coming to Jersey Mike's in 2026 are ones that will make the chain stronger and resonate with its customer base.

There's a big reason that you can expect to see big changes for Jersey Mike's in 2026, and it's directly related to the evolving leadership team. Indeed, 2025 was a big year for personnel changes for the Jersey Mike's corporation. It all started with Charlie Morrison's move into the CEO position for the company in April of 2025, following founder Peter Cancro's retirement. And the company is still building its leadership team with a renewed vision for the company.

Morrison is no stranger to the restaurant industry, with 36 years of experience at well-known companies such as Pizza Hut and Wingstop. While Jersey Mike's is doing just fine, Morrison wants to keep it that way and has slowly been bringing in people he can trust to keep the company moving in a positive direction, enhancing and optimizing what already exists. Some have been people he's already worked with before, like COO Stacy Peterson, who worked with him at Wingstop.

In December of 2025, Morrison brought on a new CFO, Michele Allen, following the former CFO's retirement. She has experience working with franchises and is still building a finance team to make sound financial decisions for the company. So, there's still a bit of a shakeup going on in various departments, but a new experience is needed to take on some of the other changes the company plans to take on in 2026.

With the new leadership, plans are to increase the number of locations across North America. You don't often see several Jersey Mike's in every city, like with some chains. So, there's plenty of room for expansion. Jersey Mike's was named Entrepreneur's number one franchise at the beginning of 2026. So, that's certainly going to have potential franchisers interested in jumping on board with the company.

When Charlie Morrison acquired the chain, there were around 3,200 locations in the U.S. His plan is to double that number at minimum, reaching as many as 8,000 locations. Jersey Mike's has been in all 50 states since 2023. Already, there are over 3,300 locations in 2,000 cities. California, Texas, and Florida have the most locations currently, with some of the biggest cities in the U.S. boasting a dozen or more locations. However, there are still plenty of areas where people have never tried Jersey Mike's, offering significant expansion opportunities. So, watch social media and local news outlets for openings near you.

Meanwhile, the first Jersey Mike's locations in Canada opened in 2024, with plans for 300 more by 2034. Redberry Restaurants, the company that runs Burger King and Taco Bell in Canada, has opened 21 Jersey Mike's across the country (mostly in Ontario). Another 16 are slated for opening soon. While nearby Canada represents the chain's first international expansion, it certainly won't be its last.

After finding success in a Canadian expansion, Jersey Mike's decided that it was time to try its luck in sandwich-loving countries overseas. This time, it's moving into the U.K. and Ireland through a franchise agreement with JM Submarines UK LTD.

The plan is to open 400 stores across the U.K. and Ireland, and the first ones will open in 2026. Interestingly, the person spearheading the expansion in these European countries is none other than the recently "retired" founder and CEO of Jersey Mike's, Peter Cancro. Who better to lead the way in Europe than the person whose vision turned the chain into a success in the U.S. for over 50 years? He knows all the ins and outs of the company already and will continue to treat it as his baby, finding all the right partners and suppliers to get it running smoothly.

The U.K. and Ireland are only the beginning of the overseas expansion planned for the future. While it's all about baby steps for now, expect to see franchises open in other countries after the chain establishes itself in these first two.

The new CFO, Michelle Allen, has lots of marketing plans for Jersey Mike's. The company owns its own tech stack, which gives it direct access to customer statistics based on direct interactions in restaurants and all sorts of digital formats. With access to this information, it hopes to expand its customer base and tailor its offerings and marketing to those customers' needs and habits.

The company is looking closely at demographics and other statistics to drive future decisions. Currently, many people are visiting Jersey Mike's for lunch and ordering cold sandwiches as walk-in to-go guests. The company has also determined that the most loyal, repeat customers are males with more expendable income. However, people of all kinds are eating at Jersey Mike's or trying it for the first time, and the company wants to find ways to get them to convert to loyal customers.

One example of something it's trying to market is a new hot Italian sub, which could bring in customers who associate Jersey Mike's with cold subs and might be enticed by a new hot one. The beauty of having access to all that data is that it can experiment and see what works to bring in new customers in different demographics. If one thing doesn't work, the chain can try something different and immediately collect the data to see what's changed in the customer base and sales stats.

While Charlie Morrison's takeover of the company is meant to be a gentle transition, since it's already a successful chain, he does have a few plans up his sleeve that he's picked up over his decades in the restaurant industry. One of those plans is to give Jersey Mike's a bigger digital presence.

The company already has a decent digital marketing strategy. Not only does it have a strong social media presence, but it's been successful in fostering a sense of authenticity, which has created community and loyalty. It's delved into paid influencer social media posts, email marketing campaigns, and enhanced mobile app capabilities. It's also engaged in location-based marketing and has collected lots of data through customer-behavior tracking.

However, Morrison wants the chain to do even more digitally. He likes to think in terms of the successes of other restaurants he's worked with, and specifically wants to replicate the successes he had with the digital sales side at Wingstop. Among other things, Wingstop is investing in AI to improve efficiency (something Jersey Mike's started investing in in 2024) and has built robust customer profiles to understand guest behavior and attract new customer demographics, leading to continued yearly same-store sales growth. As mentioned in NRN, with the changes Morrison has planned for 2026, he hopes to increase digital sales at Jersey Mike's from 40% to 60% of total sales.

Jersey Mike's has been around since 1956, but 2026 is the first year it plans on going public on the stock market. It's currently working with several financial institutions like Morgan Stanley, Jefferies Financial Group, and JPMorgan Chase to make this public offering possible. This isn't a surprising development considering that Charlie Morrison took Wingstop public, too. Hopefully, it will work out as well for Jersey Mike's as it did for Wingstop.

According to QRS, Jersey Mike's is hoping for a valuation of $12 billion or more. When the company first offers stock in its initial public offering, it hopes to raise more than $1 billion. There are plenty of good reasons to go public and find investors. For one, when Blackstone purchased the chain in 2025, it also acquired the company's debt. However, public funding can also help provide greater financial flexibility to support the company's vision of exponential expansion, both domestically and internationally, in the coming years.

There's no definite timeline yet for when you can buy Jersey Mike's stock. However, it could be even before the fourth quarter of 2026. So, stay tuned if you want to get in the game.

There's no reason for Jersey Mike's to make tons of changes to its menu. After all, it's a company that's already doing just fine. So, if you have a favorite menu item that you've been getting Mike's Way, that's not going to be changing. However, you might see some new items appear on the menu to reel in new and existing customers and hopefully drive repeat purchases.

In January of 2026, a new sandwich showed up on the menu, coinciding with the chain's 70th birthday celebration. The new sandwich was Mike's hot Italian sub. There were already some hot subs on the menu, but they were all chicken and cheese steak. However, this is the first hot sub to feature hot chopped Italian meats, and customers are there for it. It combines warm ingredients like melted provolone and grilled onions with cool ingredients like lettuce, tomato, and tangy hot chopped pepper relish (or CPR), but customers on social media have reported upgrading it with rosemary bread and their favorite condiments and veggies. 

While it's being offered as a limited-time-only item, customers on social media find its impermanence odd, since all the ingredients are readily available. Speaking of sandwiches made with ingredients that are readily available, perhaps we'll see the viral loaded BLT become a regular menu item in 2026. You never know.