NEW YORK – Is there a location off limits to Subway restaurants?

Subway, after developing more than 100 of its sandwich shops in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, was running low on potential sites, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Then came Ghazi Faddoul, a Lebanese Christian who opened a Subway inside the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland that serves up a kosher menu sans the bacon and cheese and keeps an Orthodox Jew “on hand at all times” to supervise the food preparation. According to Subway officials, Faddoul is part owner of the first and only kosher Subway restaurant.

“I look at this location in particular as a new market for Subway. Those are customers that never went to a Subway,” Faddoul told the Journal.

“To maintain its rapid growth as strip malls and spots alongside the freeway fill up with fast-food outlets,” writes the newspaper, Subway is beefing up its presence in locations where most rivals either feared or neglected to enter.

“In the past several years, Subway has opened inside a church in upstate New York, a handful of coin-operated laundries in California, a Goodwill Industries store in South Carolina, a car dealership in Germany and an appliance store in Venezuela. It has more than 110 restaurants inside hospitals,” writes the Journal.

Subway’s approach to opening restaurants “in any nook or cranny it can find” helped the company surpass McDonald’s as the restaurant chain with the most U.S. locations (Subway has more than 20,000 locations, versus McDonald’s with about 13,700).

According to the newspaper, for decades most quick-service restaurant chains had no problem setting up shop alongside empty highways and smaller towns. However, just several years ago, chains began paring their growth “as existing restaurants struggled and new sites became more difficult to find.” 

In the early 1990s, Subway began to broaden its location base by opening restaurants inside convenience stores. Then, as the market for new space tightened, Subway developed a new division to scout “nontraditional locations,” notes the newspaper. And because its menu features fresh cold cuts, Subway was also more appealing to hospitals and religious facilities because it promotes sandwiches that are fresh and healthier. 

According to the Journal, Subway has more than 1,200 units located inside Wal-Mart stores and recently opened a handful of restaurants inside Home Depot stores.