Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue IV, 2016 | Page 14

D OM I N A T O R S
BY DEBBIE SELINSKY

Taking It to the Limit
A

Rob Chinsky works hard and plays hard

fter working his usual 50- to
60-hour week tending to his 17
Indianapolis-area Penn Station
East Coast Subs stores, Rob Chinsky and his wife Linda moved both their
children into their college dorms, hours
away, all in one weekend. This typifies
Chinsky’s priorities in life: family first,
with his business and 240 close-knit employees coming in second.
Chinsky, 49, has been in franchising
since he was 23, when a family friend financed his first Penn Station restaurant.
At the time, franchisees were allowed to
own only one store. Next year he’ll open
his 18th, the maximum the brand allows.
It was a slow and steady growth path
to where he is today. “I worked from
home for the first 20 years. It was just
me, doing all the training and operating
with my wife helping with the books,” he
says. “After store 10, it just got to be too
much—much of that due to government
regulations. So I hired an office manager
and accountant. We bought an old house
built in the ’40s and re-worked it into office space. It’s five minutes from home.”
A St. Louis native whose first job as a
teen was working in a cousin’s deli, at 23
Chinsky moved to Cincinnati in 1990 to
open his first restaurant. He had become
smitten with the restaurant business and
delved into the study of hotel and resNAME: Rob Chinsky
TITLE: President
COMPANY: Chinsky Restaurant

Group
NO. OF UNITS: 17 Penn Station

East Coast Subs
AGE: 49
FAMILY: Married with two grown

children
YEARS IN FRANCHISING: 26
YEARS IN CURRENT POSITION: 26

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MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE IS S UE IV, 2016

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