Charleys Cheesesteaks founder Charley Shin started small, but found success in Columbus
Bob Vitale, Columbus Dispatch
Updated 7 min read
The downside of building a cheesesteak empire? Thirty-eight years after opening his first Charleys Cheesesteaks shop in a tiny University-District storefront and long after he stopped doing the cooking himself, Charley Shin still gets creeped out over onions.
“I don’t eat raw onion, even now. I think it’s because I sliced so many raw onions, like 50 or 100 pounds a day,” he said with a laugh that must take in the irony. Onions are a key ingredient in seven of the nine subs on Charleys' menus. If he sliced that many a day at one restaurant, how many must they go through at the 847 he's opened since?
“My hands smelled so much like onion,” he said. “I remember when I slept, I had to put my hands up like this because I couldn’t have that onion smell anywhere near me.” His hands shot straight up above his head. “Oftentimes, I still sleep like this. Maybe it’s a habit.”
Charley Shin, founder and CEO of Charleys Cheesesteaks, stands in his office in the Gosh Enterprises headquarters in Upper Arlington. Shin founded Charleys Cheesesteaks as an OSU student in the 1980s and has built his company into a nationwide chain. Shin is sole owner of Gosh Enterprises, which also owns the BIBIBOP Asian Grill chain.
As far as business hurdles go, a disdain for onions is probably the one he’d rather still have in his way. In 1986, as an Ohio State University junior studying finance and planning for a career as a real-estate developer, Shin went into business making cheesesteaks. He’d tasted one for the first time just one year earlier during a trip to Philadelphia.
He had $48,000 to get started. It was his mother’s life savings.
Needless to say, she made a good investment. Today, Shin’s privately held Gosh Enterprises has franchised Charleys Cheesesteaks in 26 states, owns 60 BIBIBOP Asian Grill restaurants and has opened 63 Lennys Grill & Subs, a sandwich chain located mostly across the south.
“You know, she had no hesitation,” Shin recalled. “She said, ‘OK, this is all I have. Go do it.”
A naïve, but successful start
Charley Shin (center) opened Charley's Steakery in 1986 at North High Street and 17th Avenue. Charleys Cheesesteaks now has restaurants in 46 states and around the world.
From the vantage of his wood-paneled office at Gosh Enterprises headquarters in Upper Arlington, 60-year-old Shin looks back at his young self as naïve. His first Charleys at High Street and 17th Avenue occupied just 450 square feet, less than a third the size of today’s standalone shops. He opened three restaurants by age 25 and began selling franchises at 27.
He went to the library and got a book about franchising. An attorney told him the probability of success was low and cautioned him to reconsider. Still, he ratcheted up his vision for a future 10 years down that road. Instead of 20 cheesesteak restaurants, he began dreaming and planning for 200.
“I was young. I said I could do it,” Shin said. “But it was just very, very hard. I worked so hard for about 12 years.”
Just as he had felt the pressure of his mother’s life savings riding on his success, Shin began feeling the burden of franchisees resting on his shoulders. Many had invested their life savings into a Charleys franchise; startup costs today run from $200,000 to $900,000, according to Entrepreneur magazine.
Entrepreneur ranked Charleys at No. 76 in its 2024 Franchise 500 list, which compares fees, contract terms, company support and other factors in franchises across all business categories.
"They're giving you a craveable sandwich," said Darren Tristano, CEO of FoodserviceResults, a Chicago-based industry consulting firm. "Plenty of meat, plenty of cheese, plenty of bread, plenty of carbs."
The key features for BIBIBOP came to Charley Shin as he prayed, and he tried to tell the Lord there were a few things wrong with his idea for fast-food Asian rice bowls that would mark a huge departure from the well-established world of Charleys Cheesesteaks.
The first: preparing the food up front and charging at the end of the line, a la Chipotle.
“I said, ‘Lord, that makes no sense. It’s going to slow down the line’ and yada yada yada. I was reasoning in my mind as I kneeled down. After a long time, I said OK.
“It was like a long dialogue that I was having with the Lord. The last was like something about rice. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re Philly cheesesteak. The rice doesn’t really work.”
After nearly four hours, Shin still had no answers. But everything started falling into place. A week later, he said, he received a phone call out of the blue from real-estate developer, Herb Glimcher. The two didn’t know each other all that well, but Glimcher offered him a deal on two restaurant properties. Then one of his own company’s executives came in and suggested an Asian fast-food concept.
Charley Shin, founder and CEO of Charleys Cheesesteaks, laughs during an interview at the Gosh Enterprises headquarters in Upper Arlington.
He charged a group of Charleys employees to figure it all out, and BIBIBOP was born. The first opened in Grandview Heights in August 2013.
It’s not just the menu – fresher, healthier, a bit outside the sandwich-and-fries fast-food mainstream – that sets BIBIBOP apart from Gosh Enterprises’ other restaurants. All 60 locations, from more than dozen in central Ohio to restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Santa Monica, California, are corporate-owned, different from Charleys’ franchise model.
The return is higher for the company, but so is the attention it must pay to each location. BIBIBOP employees are Shin’s employees, and he likes to talk about those who’ve climbed the ranks from $12-an-hour crew members to six-figure-salaried managers. More than half of his BIBIBOP managers started on the front lines, he said, and their loyalty has helped fuel the chain’s growth.
Plans call for 20 new restaurants this year.
“Throughout the industry, Columbus is known as ground zero for restaurants,” Tristano said. "If a brand makes it in Columbus, there's a strong opportunity for growth elsewhere."
Paying it all forward
The sign outside his corporate headquarters says, “Honor God and Strengthen Our Neighbor.”
“Making money is good, but how we do it is more important than the end result,” Shin said. His philosophy is simple: Don’t steal or lie. Work hard. Do good.
Ten cents from every combo meal sold at participating Charleys restaurants and 10 cents from every drink sold at all BIBIBOP locations goes to the company’s Charleys Kids Foundation, which runs tutoring programs for schoolchildren and supports nonprofit groups around the country.
The foundation is working on a new initiative designed to enhance college and career counseling for high school students.
Multiple awards can be seen in Charley Shin's office.
Shin met his wife, Mary, in college, and the couple’s son and daughter are now grown and graduated, too. Both have MBAs and worked at Gosh headquarters for a short time, he said.
“It was way too much work,” he said with a laugh. “There was really no border between father/dad vs. I am still CEO during the daytime. That borderline was so blurry. I told them, ‘You guys have to go do something else.’”
He said he’d welcome them back if they want to return, though.
“I wouldn’t mind if that’s what they want, but not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to give you a great education. You’ve got to go make your own fortune.’ I think they want to come. Let’s wait and see.”
Shin came to the United States from South Korea with his sister when he was 13 years old. His mother had come a couple years earlier, encouraged to settle in Columbus by a sister who lived here. The life savings his mother entrusted with Shin came from a small restaurant she had owned.
Shin recently asked his mother to guess how many restaurants he owns today.
“She said, ‘Two?’ I said, ‘No, more.’ She said, ‘Five?’ I said, ‘No, more.’”
"If there’s anyone I’m most grateful for, it's my mother," he said. "She’s just … I’m really grateful. She’s lived a sacrificial life for me and my sister."
