Conza felt that there was little potential in submarine sandwiches, and in 1984 opened Border Café, a tablecloth restaurant serving southwestern cuisine on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Although the Border Café did reasonably well at first, this shift in focus did not do the company much good. While Conza was turning his attention away from subs, competitor Subway, which was founded a year after the first Blimpie's was opened, was beginning an expansion drive that pushed it far ahead of Blimpie as the world's foremost submarine sandwich chain.