While much of the quick-service world spends the summer chasing limited-time offers and price-driven promotions, PrimoHoagies is heading the other direction. The latest chapter in PrimoHoagies marketing starts with a new hire: The family-owned Italian specialty deli has named Madalyn Weintraub its new Vice President of Marketing and used the appointment to launch “We’re Built Different,” an owner-led brand platform built around heritage and product quality rather than discounts.
The hire is a notable one. Weintraub arrives after years helping grow Rita’s Italian Ice from a regional favorite into a national name across more than 30 states, and she frames her PrimoHoagies mandate less as invention than excavation, helping more people discover a story the brand has been telling since 1992 rather than manufacturing a new one. It’s a positioning bet that leans on the fresh-baked seeded rolls and premium meats and cheeses the brand is known for, plus the premium ingredients and fresh preparation it has stood by since 1992.
At the center of the campaign is Owner, President and CEO Nicholas Papanier Jr., whose voice anchors the messaging. His argument is essentially that the brand’s product decisions predate its marketing decisions, and that good marketing surfaces authenticity rather than creating it. For a category where differentiation is hard to sustain, PrimoHoagies marketing that ties the campaign to the owner is a deliberate credibility play.
For franchise marketers, the more instructive detail is the operating model behind the storytelling. Weintraub’s stated priorities pair national brand-building with beefed-up local marketing resources, so franchisees can carry the “built different” message into their own markets and convert it into traffic and loyalty. It’s the familiar national-versus-local balancing act, framed here as a single connected system rather than two competing budgets.
The campaign also lands inside a broader leadership build-out. PrimoHoagies has recently added a senior development leader and a new CFO, assembling a team organized around three goals: disciplined expansion, franchisee profitability and brand differentiation. With more than 120 restaurants open and roughly 40 in development, PrimoHoagies marketing is being asked to do more than sell sandwiches. It has to explain why the brand is worth growing in the first place.