Episode 98: How Gateway Subs Turned Local Collaborations Into a St. Pete Growth Strategy | Morgan Zook
Gateway Subs didn't start with a complicated plan to take over St. Pete.
Morgan Zook and co-founder Grant Strayer hadn't even lived here.
They visited St. Pete, walked around the Pier and Central Avenue, saw the local businesses and the community around them, and decided this was where they wanted to build.
A few months later, they found their first location in Kenwood.
By the time Morgan returned to Talkin’ St. Pete for Episode 98, Gateway Subs had grown to six locations. But when Ryan Bogden asks what changed the most along the way, Morgan doesn't immediately talk about opening more stores.
He talks about local collaborations.
From Making Breakfast in a Fraternity House to Gateway Subs
Morgan's entrepreneurial story started well before Gateway Subs.
While attending Florida State, he and his roommate started making bacon, egg, and cheese bagels inside their fraternity house and delivering them to other students.
Their joke was simple: it wasn't a bed and breakfast. It was breakfast in bed.
Morgan later tried starting a supplement company. That business didn't work the way he expected, but it taught him an early lesson: having a product doesn't automatically mean people will buy it.
After graduating during COVID, he began exploring another idea, a ghost kitchen with several delivery only food concepts.
Then Grant approached him about opening a sandwich shop.
Morgan initially thought it was a ridiculous idea.
A month later, he called him back.
That call eventually brought them to St. Pete.
How Gateway Subs Became Part of the St. Pete Community
Gateway Subs opened its first location in Kenwood in November 2021.
In the beginning, Morgan wasn't sitting behind a desk building marketing campaigns. He and the other founders were inside the shop making sandwiches and figuring out how to create a product and experience people would come back for.
The marketing developed naturally from there.
Morgan started walking into local businesses, handing out cookies and mini subs, meeting people, showing up at events, and building relationships.
Then the collaborations started getting bigger.
Gateway Subs has worked with gyms, yoga studios, comedians, charities, community groups, athletes, tours, events, and other local businesses. Morgan says the idea is to find people and organizations they genuinely want to support and figure out how both sides can help each other.
Instead of simply putting two logos together for an Instagram post, Morgan wants those relationships to go deeper.
During the conversation, he explains how a partnership might include a special menu item, discounts for another business's members, events, social content, signs inside each other's locations, flyers attached to Gateway Subs orders, or simply putting food in front of a new group of people.
For Morgan, collaboration has become one of the biggest parts of how Gateway Subs grows in St. Pete.
Six Locations, But Growth Isn't Just About More Stores
Gateway Subs started with ambitious expansion goals.
Morgan says the founders once talked about reaching three locations in two years, ten in five years, and eventually going much bigger.
But his perspective on growth has changed.
Instead of focusing only on how many Gateway Subs locations they can open, Morgan says he's increasingly focused on making what they already do better.
That includes making more food in house, improving service, building a stronger team, and continuing to deepen Gateway's relationships around St. Pete.
“The biggest thing isn't about just mass producing. It's, you know, how do we keep elevating quality every step of the way?”
That approach also shows up in how Morgan talks about the people working inside the company.
At the time of the conversation, Gateway Subs had roughly 45 to 50 team members.
Morgan says many managers worked their way up within the business, and the leadership team meets regularly to keep everyone connected as the company grows.
Opening another location is one challenge.
Keeping the experience strong across all of them is another.
The Unexpected Side of Morgan's Creativity
One of the more surprising parts of the conversation has almost nothing to do with sandwiches.
Morgan talks about his meditation practice and how it has influenced the way he thinks, works, and comes up with ideas.
He's completed multiple 10 day silent meditation retreats, where participants spend much of the day meditating without phones or normal day to day distractions.
Morgan says some of his creative ideas arrive when he isn't actively trying to come up with them.
That includes marketing ideas.
He keeps hundreds of ideas in his notes and sometimes waits months before the right opportunity, person, or collaboration makes one worth using.
It's a different way of looking at marketing.
Not every idea needs to happen immediately.
Sometimes the better move is paying attention, meeting people, and waiting until an idea actually fits.
Why St. Pete Worked for Gateway Subs
Morgan didn't grow up in St. Pete.
He didn't move here with a huge local network.
Yet during the episode, he says building Gateway Subs here would be difficult to replicate in most other places.
A big reason is the local business community.
Gateway Subs can partner with a fitness group one week, a yoga studio another, then work with a charity, event, comedian, athlete, or completely different local organization next.
Those relationships introduce people to new businesses while keeping more attention on what's happening locally.
That's also why Morgan wants to keep investing his time here as Gateway Subs grows outside St. Pete.
For him, the opportunity isn't simply to sell more sandwiches.
It's to keep becoming more connected to the city that gave Gateway Subs its start.
And considering the entire thing began with two people who barely knew St. Pete and an idea for a sandwich shop, that's a pretty good St. Pete story.
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