Tushar Timbawala

If you walk into the Subway Restaurant off Fern Valley Rd. in Louisville on any given weekday, you are likely to see Tushar Timbawala, darting around behind the counter as if he was a man possessed. There he’ll be, working the cash register, running the drive through, preparing bread, hanging signs, and doing the jobs normally reserved for line employees, or as Subway likes to call them, “Sandwich Artists”.

If you watch Tushar, or TK as he likes to be called, you get the sense of a man that truly loves what he does. In watching him you realize that it is not the work or the sandwich production, but the interaction with people, the love of customer service that drives TK. He is a people person, an out‐going social addict who loves to smile, to talk, to know his customers. And this attitude infects his entire team.

It was not always this way. It is a learned personality, drawn from struggles learning to speak English, and having to adapt into a vastly different society than his native India. TK credits his older Sister “Sonal”, with helping him to navigate difficult high school years punctuated by social challenges at the hands of often unkind and non‐understanding peers.

TK spent off ‐time from school working in family businesses. During a summer vacation in Carmi, Illinois, TK got his first taste of the hospitality business. His Uncle owned a small independent property, and TK worked there, studying the basics of business, and bettering his English on the fly, day by day his skills growing stronger. By the time his Brother “Hiten” developed and opened the first HRS hotel in Louisville in 1999, TK was business savvy and language fluent. “The two of us”, says TK, “did every job in the hotel. We worked the desk, we cleaned the rooms, and we washed the linen. We learned the business from the ground up.”

Years have passed now and TK continues to work as HRS Hotels Group Vice President, and doubles as leader of the HRS Restaurant division. His highly recognized and awarded “Subway” franchise is the number one performing store in Kentucky, and his winning system of champion customer service has been developed throughout the structure of HRS hotels and restaurants. The “customer values”, the words of Mohandas Gandhi that teach all HRS employees and management that our Customers and our Guests, are the “sole purpose of our existence”, were brought to the forefront of our company philosophy by TK, and his inspired tradition of service excellence.

This excellence was never more apparent than in June 2011 when TK and his team took on an order from the United States Army to produce and deliver 1400 sandwiches, drinks, chips and cookies to soldiers working National Guard duties in Louisville. It was the type order reserved for a master catering operation, with multiple facilities, and a huge staff. Not a small Subway store, hard pressed during a busy lunch day.

TK loves a challenge, and with his own store Manager on combat duty in the Gulf with the Kentucky National Guard, it was a way to give tribute to his own long term employee, and to all Soldiers serving their Country. So he secured the HRS Holiday Inn Airport convention room, quadrupled his normal Subway product order, rented a refrigeration truck, lined up his family and friends, and proceeded to bring mass production to Subway.

TK delivered on his promise to the US Army, and in so doing received their recognition, and the recognition of his own franchise for a job, “above and beyond” the call of duty.

These traits, these earmarks of customer care, are the best description of TK. He lives by the business ethic of his Father, “Kantilal” who taught, “there is NO Success in Business, if there is NO Value placed in the Employee and Customer". For those who know and work with TK, it is his unique style. It is about being a good and strong Family man, a respected and moral Business leader, and mostly about just being “a good guy”. That’s Tushar Timbawala.