How Elisabeth built the fortune
Elisabeth DeLuca's wealth comes from Subway, the sandwich chain her husband Fred DeLuca co-founded in 1965. Fred was seventeen and looking for a way to pay for college when a family friend, the nuclear physicist Peter Buck, lent him 1,000 dollars to open a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The shop was first called Pete's Super Submarines, and the two men became lifelong business partners, each owning about half of the company.
The early stores struggled, but the partners kept opening new ones and in 1974 began franchising. Franchising was the key to Subway's growth. Owners paid a fee and a share of their sales to the parent company, which did not need to fund the construction of each outlet. Because the restaurants were small and cheap to open, the chain spread rapidly through the United States and then abroad, eventually reaching tens of thousands of locations in more than one hundred countries and becoming one of the largest restaurant chains in the world by number of outlets.
Fred DeLuca died in 2015. His share of the privately held company passed to his family, and Elisabeth became one of its principal owners. For years the DeLuca and Buck families kept Subway private and resisted offers. In 2024 they completed the sale of the company to Roark Capital, a private equity firm that specializes in franchised restaurant brands, in a deal widely reported at around 9.6 billion dollars. The sale converted the family's stake into cash and other assets.
The timing reflected years of pressure on the chain. Subway had been closing underperforming restaurants in the United States after a long period of expansion, and the owners had brought in outside executives to refresh the menu and marketing. Those changes improved sales and helped attract buyers when the families decided to sell.
For most of its history the company was run with little outside capital and few layers of management, reflecting the founders' preference for simplicity. Fred DeLuca remained chief executive for about five decades and personally shaped the chain's emphasis on low costs and fast growth. Because the business stayed private, the founding families kept all of the value created by the franchise system rather than sharing it with public shareholders, which is why the eventual sale produced such a large payout for them.
Companies and holdings
Before the 2024 sale, the family's main asset was its ownership of Doctor's Associates, the Connecticut company that owned the Subway brand and franchise system. After the transaction, Subway is controlled by Roark Capital, whose portfolio also includes other restaurant franchisors.
Elisabeth DeLuca's wealth is now held largely in the proceeds of that sale, along with family foundation assets and private investments. The family has not published details of how the proceeds are invested.
Peter Buck's family, the other half of the original partnership, sold its stake in the same transaction. The deal ended nearly six decades of control by the two founding families and placed Subway alongside other franchise brands owned by Roark, including several sandwich and fast food chains.
Early life and career
Few details about Elisabeth DeLuca's early life have been published. She was married to Fred DeLuca for several decades as Subway grew from a handful of shops into a global brand, and the couple had a son, Jonathan.
Fred DeLuca's sister, Suzanne Greco, ran the company as chief executive after his illness and death, keeping leadership in the family for several more years before outside executives were brought in. Elisabeth, by contrast, has stayed out of the public eye and has not taken an operating role in recent years. She lives in Florida.
Her privacy is consistent with the way the founding families ran Subway for most of its history. The company rarely disclosed financial results, and the owners preferred to let franchisees and executives represent the brand in public.
Philanthropy and public life
The DeLuca family's charitable activity runs mainly through the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation, which has supported education, health care and community programs. Fred DeLuca also backed microlending programs to help aspiring entrepreneurs, reflecting the way he started his own business with a small loan.
Elisabeth DeLuca rarely gives interviews or makes public statements, so information about her personal giving is limited to what the foundation discloses. She is not known for political activity.