Subway closes for major renovations

Gunnison’s local Subway, at 134 E. Tomichi Ave., closed for renovations nearly a month ago, with a paper sign taped to the door that read: “Temporarily closed for remodel assessment and equipment evaluation.” 

Despite the quick closure, former Subway employees say that it was a long time coming, alleging years of neglect on the building and business equipment. The closure follows three months of management turnover, reports of hazardous working conditions and equipment left in disrepair for so long that employees became concerned about food safety. Concerned with the slew of issues, the restaurant’s general manager temporarily closed the store and then quit. Less than two weeks later, the owner closed it indefinitely. 

“We are closed for a pending remodel as the sign states,” said building and Subway franchise owner Jim Cagle in an email to the Times. “I am working with my architect as we speak. We will be working on a demo in the next few weeks.”

Old building, new problems

The Gunnison location is owned by Jim and Liz Cagle, Grand Junction-based business developers who own a number of Subway franchises around the Western Slope. The pair purchased the building in 2003 for around $420,000. 

Sitting on the major Hwy. 50 thoroughfare, the Subway was a popular spot, and during the summer season, weekly sales could exceed $20,000, said former general manager Carly Johann. The workload, combined with frequent short-staffing, made it difficult to take mandated breaks, especially as throngs of people spilled through the door at lunch.

In the final two months before the Subway closed, general management changed three times. Johann, general manager from 2020-23, worked for the Cagle’s for 13 years at various locations around the Western Slope. Johann was fired on June 14, and a day later, Jess Willis was hired to replace her. Willis only stayed for a month and a half before quitting and yielding the role to Alyssia Soto.  

Johann, who was born and raised in the Gunnison Valley, started working for the local subway when she was just 18. She relocated to Grand Junction for nearly a decade to manage stores there, but returned to the Gunnison location in 2020 after her superiors wanted to improve the overall management of the store. 

“They thought maybe somebody that was from here, a local, would be able to run it,” she said.

During her three years at the Subway, Johann said she made various requests to Cagle to replace old equipment, get permanent repairs done on the plumbing and electrical system and hire more employees. If those requests were answered, repairs were often temporary, with promises of a larger renovation down the line, she said.  

“It was getting old and torn up, and just falling apart, really,” Johann said. “ [The renovation] was something that really needed to happen, especially being such a busy location.”

The building was originally built in 1945, but the county property assessor’s office lists its effective year as 1990; the effective year built captures the last major renovation that brought it up to standard with buildings put up around that time. In 2003, the building underwent another major renovation, this time from an old gas station into its semi-final state as a Subway and frozen yogurt shop, TCBY. The City of Gunnison received the last renovation plans in 2007 and 2008 to remove the frozen yogurt shop and add a storage area, and nothing since. 

Before she was let go, Johann said she warned upper management about the impending summer and said the air conditioning unit needed to be fixed before temperatures soared. But she never got a reply, she said. 

Repairs left hanging 

After Johann was fired, Willis was brought on as the new general manager. But Willis was only at the location for a little over a month and half before she made the decision to temporarily close it down so repairs could be made, and then quit. 

“You don't care about your employees if you don't fix a simple thing like air conditioning in the middle of summer when we're working at around [high] temperatures … It's just not acceptable,” Willis said. 

Willis is ServSafe certified in the state of Colorado, a designation that means the person has been trained in food safety procedures. In her brief stint at the Subway, Willis said she witnessed a number of concerning trends. The building frequently registered 84-93 degrees inside the building, she said. Although the building had an air conditioning unit, it rarely worked, according to former employee Rue Barron. Employees had to walk away from the line to cool down. Food coolers, the bain (a refrigerated cooler for perishable foods) went down constantly and she regularly recorded lunch meat reaching unsafe temperatures on the prep line, Willis said. 

Angelo Lujan worked at the Gunnison location for 2 years. They said when the bain stopped working, employees put ice underneath just to try to keep the lunchmeat cool. Erica Bramlett, who had worked in the food service industry since she was 16, started working at Subway this past winter and stayed only two months. When she “flipped” the vegetables — putting the oldest on top and the newest on bottom — she said she ended up throwing them out half the time. 

“We do our part as employees to make sure it's dated and it's in the walk-in, but I'm assuming just because it couldn't keep things to temp, it just got super out of control,” Bramlett said. 

Willis closed the store and quit on July 28. Days later, a representative from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) called Willis on Aug. 1, asking about air conditioning, heat and food safety. The Times put in a records request with OSHA for any incident reports filed in the last six months, but has yet to verify if these records exist and/or receive them. 

Health inspections

Gunnison County is required by state law to send a local health inspector to the over 200 retail food permits held in county limits. This visit happens at least once every two years, but up to three times a year depending on the type of restaurant, said Gunnison County Consumer Protection Specialist Nicole Stone. Each time inspectors go into a food establishment, they are only seeing a “snapshot” of those operations, she said. 

The Gunnison Subway was inspected once a year for at least the last four years, according to health inspection records obtained by the Times. From 2020 to 2023, the establishment passed inspection, but not without issue. 

For the last four years, the establishment has not had a certified food protection manager, an individual who has received training to manage safe food preparation. This was noted as a repeated offense. Stone declined to comment on whether or not Subway was mandated to have one. 

The 2023 report details that at the time of the inspection, employees did not have adequate hand washing sinks, and some food was not adequately cooled. The report also noted the dishwashing sink was broken, leading to high concentrations of the ammonia sanitizing solution. 

“Closures are typically done when there is the presence of one or several high risk or imminent health hazards,” Stone said. “In this case, that result was a passing inspection. So we didn't have any of that at the time.” 

When an inspector marks something as out of compliance during the visit, it doesn’t necessarily trigger a reinspection, she said, and some things can be corrected on site. Stone said Gunnison County was not involved in Subway’s closure. 

“Due to new equipment timing and the contractor, it is too early to comment on an opening date,” Cagle said.

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)