Sunbury Subway fills biggest order ever; 2,000 box lunches served at conference

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Joann Hings­ber­gen, owner of Sub­way of Sun­bury, is accus­tomed to cater­ing orders. Sun­bury Sub­way caters par­ties and other gath­er­ings, some­times pro­vid­ing hun­dreds of sand­wich and salad meals.

But on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 23, Sun­bury Sub­way filled an order to beat all orders — 2,000 boxed sand­wich and salad meals for the Sixth Annual Colum­bus Catholic Women’s Con­fer­ence held at the Ohio State Expo Cen­ter Lausche Building.

Hings­ber­gen said the con­fer­ence was a day of praise and speak­ers and, of course, a break for lunch; and the con­fer­ence was all women, and women watch what they eat, so menu choices included healthy turkey and veg­e­tar­ian subs and salads.

The 2013 Colum­bus Catholic Women’s Con­fer­ence was the largest cater­ing order Sub­way of Sun­bury has ever filled, by 250 lunches. Hings­ber­gen and her crew catered the 2012 Catholic Women’s Con­fer­ence where 1,750 meals were served.

Hings­ber­gen said typ­i­cally 200 to 300 cus­tomers walk through the doors at Sub­way of Sun­bury each day, and walk out with 300 to 350 subs; that the Colum­bus Catholic Women’s Con­fer­ence is like a week’s worth of busi­ness in a 24-hour period.

A catered order for 2,000 hun­gry con­fer­ence atten­dees doesn’t hap­pen overnight – though the orders were assem­bled the night before the conference.

There were many meet­ings to plan usage, cal­cu­late for­mu­las and fig­ure out the num­ber cases of each com­po­nent in the subs and sal­ads, Hings­ber­gen said; and there was an extra food deliv­ery that week. Then came the hard part, assem­bling the box lunches to deliver to the conference.

That’s where more help came in, as Sun­bury Sub­way employ­ees gath­ered for an all-night ses­sion bak­ing bread and mak­ing and box­ing sand­wiches and salads.

“There was a lot of slic­ing veg­eta­bles as we assem­bled the sand­wiches; and all of our bread is always made within 24 hours of usage,” Hings­ber­gen said. “And we don’t have stor­age space, so we rented a 26-foot refrig­er­ated box truck that was packed full with 10 pallets.

“It was very much a team effort,” Hings­ber­gen added. “I love my staff; they did an awe­some job. They are a hard work­ing, coop­er­a­tive bunch of kids I can always trust.”

Hings­ber­gen said Sun­bury Sub­way has a cater­ing focus that will help cus­tomers plan party needs, and deliv­ery at a cer­tain level can be arranged.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about Sub­way of Sun­bury Cater­ing go to < sunburysubway.com > where you can order online, or call 740–965-2244.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.