At Jimmy John’s, supporting local communities is baked into the brand’s DNA. That’s why Atlas franchising group’s CEO James Chung and his teams in Pennsylvania and California have worked to identify opportunities to go above and beyond during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We came up with this idea to keep all of our people safely working and helping the community,” said Trey Satterfield, Regional Director for Atlas. “So our teams created the Atlas Street Team East and Atlas Street Team West, where we identified different organizations to help.”

Because of a blood shortage in Californa, the Atlas West team held a blood drive, where they offered a free eight-inch sandwich and a cookie to anyone who gave blood.

“It was really cool to be involved with this blood drive because we partnered with LifeStream Blood Bank, where they would actually email us afterward and say, ‘Hey, your blood was just donated to a person,'” Satterfield said.

The West team has continued to be involved in other community efforts, including a beach cleanup. The East team has partnered with an organization called Foster Love Project, which is a donation center that provides free items for foster children. To support Foster Love Project, the East team deep cleaned the facility and helped create an organizational system to assist the staff in upcoming donations.

“The Foster Love Project kind of hit very close to home for some of our team members, and so it was very important for us to help,” said Satterfield. “One of my managers came up in an environment that was very similar and her passion really just kind of spread to the rest of the team.”

For Satterfield, it’s efforts like these that make working at Jimmy John’s so special.

“Doing this work means everything to me, personally,” said Satterfield. “This is what working at Jimmy John’s is all about. We truly believe that no matter who you are, if you like to have fun and work hard, we would love to have you. Most importantly, we want our communities to know that we’re here to stay and we’re here to support.”