Subway restaurant’s Chelten Plaza location is open for business

On Wednesday morning, Kamal Jitsing sat at a table inside the new Subway location in Germantown’s Chelten Plaza.

For months, the windows were covered as workers prepared to get the restaurant ready to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. At 7 a.m. Tuesday, they started to do just that.

“It feels good,” said Jitsing, the location’s franchisee/owner. “Even in the rain, we had a lot of customers [yesterday]. The first one came in at 7:08, 7:05, something like that. I was thinking we’d have time for employees to get comfortable, but it was busy all day.”

With seven full- and part-time employees, he said they are still accepting applications, with experience in the business as a plus.

Word of the Subway location was first mentioned to NewsWorks in October, around the same time its new neighbor Citibank announced it would expand into a full-service branch.

Five months later, a huge balloon and neon “Open” sign signified that the 48-year-old franchise was now the fifth tenant in Chelten Plaza.

Subway joins Wired Beans Cafe, Citibank, Anna’s Linens, Deals variety store and Save-A-Lot grocery in a shopping center which now has three vacancies.

Jitsing said on Wednesday that he hopes their fare will provide an alternative to fast-food and Chinese take-out locations already in and around this section of Germantown.

“This community, it needs healthy food,” he said. “It think it’ll be great here.”

Chelten Plaza marks Subway’s 49th location in Philadelphia. The company website notes that there are “38,962 [Subway] restaurants in 100 countries.”