Quickies owner Gabe Carie keeps customers coming back
The décor inside the Quickies sub shop, 1911 N. Sixth St., is Spartan. Where other small sandwich joints might have signed pictures of celebrities that may have come through, or local sports teams memorabilia hanging from their walls, the proprietors of Quickies have opted for a more to-the-point motif of mostly empty space. But the customers who come in don’t really care what’s on the walls other than the bulletin board, because it’s there that hangs the sign announcing whether Gabe Carie has made up a batch of his chili. In the winter months, especially, it’s the first place entering customers look.
Carie, the owner and one of the originators of Quickies, makes an excellent pot of chili, among many other things, like sub sandwiches, soups and salads. Since starting the restaurant with a pair of friends 13 years ago, he’s added many things to the original menu and the reputation of his humble sub shop has grown into that of a local staple, adored by locals and is sure to be one of the places regulars mention whenever someone asks, “What’s a good place to eat in this town?”
“I’ve been involved in restaurants for a long time. I went to Purdue and (Vincennes University) and studied restaurant management,” Carie said. “I worked as a manager for a few years at another local restaurant, but when I got tired of that I decided to start my own place.”
That’s when he, his current business partner, Larry Kerns, and another friend of theirs came up with the idea for Quickies. Originally, Carie said he wanted to open a franchise of Jimmy Johns, a chain of sandwich restaurants. But that proved too expensive, so he used Jimmy Johns as a sort of template for his own idea — a small sub shop with tongue-in-cheek names for its menu. From the time the friends started brainstorming ideas, including coming up with quirky names for some of the things on the menu, to opening the doors, only three months had gone by. The original location of the restaurant was a small, non-descript shack next to the railroad tracks on Sixth Street. Carie and his partners had big plans that included multiple locations and franchising, so a humble building from which to build on was perfectly acceptable.
But as time went on and the restaurant got busier, Carie’s vision changed and plans for expanding were dropped in favor of putting more of his own toil into the Quickies that existed. It soon became clear that a small shack with a tiny parking lot wasn’t going to cut it, so he looked outward to find a bigger building to move into. Luckily, he didn’t have to go far, just up the street on Sixth in what used to be White’s Kitchen, so customers still knew where to find him. Then, he decided to put more of his own touch to the menu items. Where Carie used to use some pre-packaged ingredients in his menu items, he’s now making more from scratch, like the roast beef and turkey used to make sandwiches. And, of course, there’s that famous chili.
Carie’s personality doesn’t seem to lend itself to grand-scale operations. He’s terse and unanimated. Franchises and empires are more suited to boisterous types who can’t help but beat their own success into the world. That’s not Carie. When asked about his business, his answers are all business and laden with humility. A story about what his office looked like before his employees gifted him a remodeling tells it well — a plain desk, a simple chair and a filing cabinet.
Carie’s idea caught on among locals mostly because the food is good. He’s figured out how to make a good sandwich, among all the other things. But the names of his sandwiches definitely share some of the credit for customers returning. Sandwiches named the Nooner, the Bootknocker, Moby Dick (a reference to the Led Zeppelin song), and the Big Willy BLT (named for his father, Bill) can make a visitor chuckle. The Breakfast Club sandwich might seem like it’s a nod to the 1980’s John Hughes film, but it is actually an inside joke about Carie’s days at Purdue.
“That’s what we called it when you wake up at 6 a.m. and start drinking,” he said, straight-faced.
That’s what lets new customers know that while the proprietor takes the food on the menu very seriously, he doesn’t take himself that way and they can share a laugh and a good lunch together.
But if by some strange circumstance none of the sandwiches on the menu catch the fancy of visitors, Gabe will be happy to make a custom one and deliver it anywhere in town. On cold winter days, a heated car and Quickies drive-through window mean customers don’t have to make a cold walk to the front door.
Carie isn’t alone in running his empire. That might be an impossible task, so his right hand, Jennifer Russell, has taken on much of the day-to-day operations. During the lunch rush on any given day, Russell will be handling the cash register and making sure the kitchen staff, which consists mostly of young high school or college students, are staying efficient. She’s been working in this capacity for about two years, she said, though she’s still a bit surprised at the fact that life has taken her to working in a small sub shop, it is fulfilling work.
“It’s the last thing I thought I’d be doing at this age, but Gabe is just great to work with. He’s laid back and doesn’t micromanage,” she said.
The two seem more like old friends who wound up working together. She points out that Carie is musically inclined, sometimes singing or playing guitar with his younger employees, who are often aspiring musicians, too.
“Restaurants and music are kind of intrinsically linked,” Carie said. “I think every musician has worked in a restaurant at some point.”
According to Carie, Quickies will probably remain what it is now for a long time. He doesn’t have plans to franchise anymore, despite repeated pleas from aspiring business partners to open locations in nearby places, like Lawrenceville, Ill, and Evansville. Some like their empires small.
“I’ve seen places that try to get too big,” he said.
By Rama Sobhani