Firehouse Subs Co-Founder Chris Sorensen Dies at Age 65

Chris Sorensen, the co-founder of Firehouse Subs, has died at 65, according to the New York Post, which cited reporting from Fox News and Sorensen's obituary. He and his younger brother, Robin, opened the chain's first location in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1994.

How did Chris Sorensen get into the restaurant business?

Before co-founding Firehouse Subs, Sorensen worked as a professional guitarist, performing alongside Huey Lewis and the News, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Foreigner and Earth, Wind & Fire, according to his obituary as cited by the New York Post. He later became a firefighter, following his father, Robert, into the profession. Sorensen worked at the Brevard County Fire Department and the Jacksonville International Airport Fire and Rescue Department before spending 10 years as an engineer and EMT at the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department — the same department where his father also served, per the same report.

When and how did Firehouse Subs start?

Chris and Robin Sorensen launched Firehouse Subs in 1994 with less than $100 between their checking accounts, according to figures reported by Nation's Restaurant News and cited by the New York Post. The brothers' first location opened in their hometown of Jacksonville. The business model centered on steamed meats and cheeses piled onto warm, toasted rolls — a format the Post reports became a commercial hit for the chain in the decades that followed.

What was the first order ever sold at Firehouse Subs?

The flagship location's first-ever order was not a sub at all. It was two hot dogs loaded with roughly 10 ingredients each, Robin Sorensen told the Jacksonville Daily Record in a 2020 interview cited by the Post.

"We were so focused on the subs, we weren't prepared for that order. Needless to say, it was a long ticket time."

That anecdote, recounted by Robin Sorensen six years before his brother's death, illustrates how far the brand's menu planning had to stretch in its earliest days — before the sub-centric format that would define the chain took hold.

How big did Firehouse Subs grow under Sorensen's leadership?

From that single Jacksonville storefront, Firehouse Subs expanded to more than 1,200 locations nationwide, according to the New York Post's report on Sorensen's death. The Post attributes interior design decisions at the chain to Chris Sorensen directly, describing him as having taken creative ownership of the restaurants' look — though the underlying source material does not specify a location count tied to a particular year, making a growth rate between 1994 and the present impossible to calculate from available figures.

What is Sorensen's legacy at the company he co-founded?

Sorensen's death closes out a three-decade run that began with two firefighters-turned-entrepreneurs and less than $100 in combined savings. The chain he helped build alongside his brother grew into a 1,200-unit national footprint, per the Post's figures, built on a menu format — steamed subs served on toasted rolls — that the brothers refined after early missteps like the unplanned hot dog order. Robin Sorensen's 2020 recollection of that first ticket, published six years before Chris Sorensen's death, remains the most detailed first-person account of the chain's earliest operating days in the available record.

No cause of death, survivors, or funeral arrangements beyond the obituary reference are specified in the sourcing reviewed for this report. Readers seeking additional biographical detail can consult Sorensen's full obituary as referenced by the New York Post.

What sourcing underlies this account of Sorensen's death?

The New York Post's report, byline credited to Sadie Chafe and attributed to Fox News, was published Oct. 26, 2026, and draws on multiple secondary sources rather than Post staff reporting. The $100 starting-capital figure traces to Nation's Restaurant News, while the hot-dog origin story and Robin Sorensen's quote come from a 2020 interview he gave to the Jacksonville Daily Record. Biographical details about Chris Sorensen's music career and firefighting service are credited to his obituary, with an accompanying photo in the Post's story crediting Dignity Memorial, an obituary-hosting service, as the image source. The Post does not identify an original byline for the obituary text itself.

That layered sourcing — Fox News reporting for the Post, which in turn cites Nation's Restaurant News, the Jacksonville Daily Record and an unnamed obituary — means no single outlet in the chain independently verified every figure in the piece. The 1,200-location count and the sub-shop's steamed-sandwich format are the only claims the Post attributes directly to its own reporting rather than to another publication or document.

Artiglio is A coming-soon iPhone chief of staff for briefings and drafts. Not on the App Store yet.