The longest-running location of the Great Outdoors, a sandwich shop, closed in Addison on Jan. 31.
It was not the original location of the Great Outdoors, which started in downtown Dallas in 1973. But Addison was the most enduring. It served submarine sandwiches for nearly 45 years in the shopping center east of the Dallas North Tollway near Belt Line Road and Montfort Drive.
Today, Prestonwood Place shopping center has a mix of old and new restaurants, some local and some not. Texas-based tenants include Asian Mint, La La Land Coffee, Loro Asian Smokehouse & Bar and Twin Peaks. Newcomers from out of state include Flower Child, Jeni’s Ice creams, Mendocino Farms, Postino wine cafe and Shake Shack burgers.
The Great Outdoors was the shopping center’s first tenant when it opened in 1981. It was a popular lunch spot near Prestonwood Town Center, the long-gone shopping mall.
New Jersey native Jerry Oliverie created the Great Outdoors. Oliverie learned the business by working in a deli starting at age 18.
He moved to Dallas and opened the Great Outdoors in 1973, near Federal and Akard streets in the city center. Staffers made bread in-house daily and piled sandwiches high with beef and provolone, or corned beef and Swiss, or the Great Special: spiced ham, salami, bologna and cheese. Sandwiches once cost $1.99.
Still, Oliverie found himself explaining sub sandwiches to new customers.
“People would stop by,” Oliverie said in a 1993 story in The Dallas Morning News, “and say, ‘What’s a submarine sandwich? Does that mean you have to eat it under water?‘”
But of course his sandwich shop caught on quickly. For the first 15 years, Oliverie “opened a new store almost every 18 months,” The News reported in 1987. The second shop was at Skillman near Abrams in East Dallas. The Addison location opened in 1981.
Oliverie’s brother, Dominick Oliverie, split off from the business in the 1980s and opened Great American Hero in Dallas. For decades, the two operated different but similar sandwich shops. (In 2022, Dominick Oliverie’s Great American Hero was sold to new owners, and it closed and moved. It has since closed again.)
In the 1990s, Dallas-Fort Worth went through a “sandwich boom,” according to a Morning News story. Jerry Oliverie was considered a “pioneer” — a local restaurateur whothat kept growing his local business as chains like Subway, Quizno’s and Schlotzky’s moved in, The News said.
Today, the Great Outdoors has six restaurants: in Frisco, Fort Worth, Richardson, Carrollton, McKinney and on Dallas’ Upper Greenville Avenue.
What went wrong in Addison?
The Addison restaurant didn’t have a drive-through, a problem for a sandwich shop today, president and founder Jerry Oliverie said. Also, DoorDash and Uber Eats are a significant part of the business plan, and the Addison restaurant’s interior location in the shopping center didn’t make it as accessible or visible as he desired.
Just as important, rent increases made it uneconomical to stay in Addison, Oliverie said.
“We had a good go,” he said.
The restaurant is full of memorabilia. “If you went to the Greenhill School, you probably ate here often, and your initials may be carved into our vintage ‘draw leaf’ tables!” Oliverie typed in a farewell note taped to the restaurant window.
On Friday, he will sell tables, chairs and restaurant equipment in an online auction at tmadalldallasnews.esdiario.info. He hopes nostalgic Dallasites look for their initials on the tables. And he’s curious who might want the 10-foot meat case topped in porcelain. (“It’s so big, we have to take down part of the storefront to get it out of there,” he said.)
Despite the restaurant’s long run in Addison, Oliverie isn’t overly sentimental.
“I don’t want people thinking the Great Outdoors is going out of business,” he reminded. “It’s one location.”
The Great Outdoors was at 5290 Belt Line Road, Dallas. The restaurant group has six remaining restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth. Find one here.