Big Star Sandwich has eight locations in Metro Vancouver, but none in the city of Vancouver.
That will be changing soon.
The Lower Mainland sandwich chain has signs up and a business license pending for a spot on West Broadway.
Ta-Ke Don, a quick-stop Japanese restaurant specializing in donburi and salads, shuttered their location at 802 West Broadway earlier this year.
Big Star Sandwich now has papered over the windows as renovations take place and put up "Help Wanted" signs as they prepare the location.
The sandwich chain started in 2013 in New Westminster and has been opening throughout the region since then. While there are a couple of locations close to Vancouver (one is 100 meters east, in Burnaby, and another is just inside UBC), the West Broadway location will be the first in Vancouver proper.
The local company makes made-to-order sandwiches on filone bread; each is numbered, like the number 17 (a beef dip sandwich) or the number 20 (corned beef and hickory sticks).
“If you think about chain restaurants out there, there’s a ton of burgers, there’s even chicken, pizza, there’s a lot of everything, but there’s not a lot of sandwiches. So you have Subway everywhere,” Alex Johrden, director of operations, told Glacier Media in 2017.
He described Big Star as the anti-Subway.
In 2017 Big Star attracted international media attention when movie star Liam Neeson took advantage of a "Liam Neeson eats here for free" advertisement.
With files from Cayley Dobie
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