Sandwich chain cites AI 22 times in IPO filing

The S-1, which is an IPO registration document, for the sandwich shop chain Jersey Mike’s contains 22 mentions of the term artificial intelligence and its acronym “AI.” The company, which features actor Danny DeVito as its public face, is fundamentally in the business of selling submarine sandwiches rather than software. Yet, driven by intense investor demand for artificial intelligence, even traditional food brands are finding ways to incorporate the technology into their public financial disclosures. In its official filing, Jersey Mike’s states, “We are beginning to use AI Technologies in our business.” This is despite the fact that the company does not sell AI software.

This inclusion highlights a broader market trend where companies feel a strong compulsion to sprinkle “AI dust” over their investor pitches. This phenomenon is visible across the corporate landscape, affecting everything from early-stage startups to established entities like Bending Spoons, a company in the business of buying aging, “not-AI” tech companies to rehabilitate them. Like most modern retail operations, Jersey Mike’s relies heavily on standard digital infrastructure, referencing software 52 times and data 112 times in its filing. However, the company also chose to feature AI within its boilerplate investor-risk warnings, despite offering little detail on how the technology is actually being deployed.

While some food businesses have faced operational issues with technology—such as the “half-baked AI inventory tool that Starbucks rolled out, which couldn’t count and was recently scrapped”—the actual threat of an AI-related crisis for a physical sandwich chain remains low. Indeed, one could go out on a limb and predict that the risk of an AI disaster for a company that produces real-life sandwiches, rather than AI slop, is about the same as a franchise shop getting hit by lightning. For context, a Jersey Mike’s franchise location in Texas was actually hit by lightning in 2021. Despite this real-world occurrence, weather was only mentioned five times in the S-1 registration document, and lightning was not mentioned at all.

Why it matters

The inclusion of AI in Jersey Mike’s IPO documents highlights the extent of current investor thirst for AI-related companies, even among businesses that do not sell AI software.