Jim Hamilton (center) meets with employees Roxann Slack and Robert Roberts in Hamilton’s newest Subway at 1915 El Cajon Blvd. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

When Jim Hamilton was growing up in Georgia, his field worker father instilled in him the strong work ethic that began by rising early and working hard. To this day, Hamilton usually sees the sun rise, then spends each day in productive pursuits. Instead of the schoolwork his father demanded, Hamilton, now 60, oversees the operation of 14 Subway sandwich stores and many residential rentals.

He is a self-defined workaholic, a black businessman who thrives on the entrepreneurial activities that fill his days. He hires about 10 employees per store and two general managers to run the sandwich shops, which he owns with his business partner and former wife, Sue Hamilton.

The Hamiltons purchased their first Subway more than a dozen years ago in Lemon Grove, where the business is headquartered. That was after Hamilton’s first career with San Diego Gas & Electric as manager of economic forecasting and financial planning.

He had started purchasing rental properties while at SDG&E, and after his retirement in the early 1980s he continued to acquire property and went back to school. He earned a master’s degree in management at what was then USIU. He had received his bachelor’s degree at Cal Poly, Pomona many years earlier after completing military service.

His life in San Diego, he says, has been almost totally free of racial discrimination. Hamilton and his wife, a teacher at Kate Sessions Elementary School who recently retired after 30 years, raised two children here. Denisha, 29, a nutritionist, lives in Washington, D.C., and Damian, 30, is business development manager at Casa de Mañana in La Jolla.

“Oh, initially, when I started buying properties,” he says, he met some resistance. “But I had a good agent who ran interference. We made it a non-issue by having someone else do it.” Although his rentals were successful, Hamilton thought he should diversify. He attended small business seminars and learned about franchises in general and that the failure rate is low with a franchise.

“Then I considered what made sense,” he says. “I didn’t want to reinvent the customer by selling to someone only once or twice a year.” He chose food because satisfied customers keep returning. He liked Subway because the stores have a limited kitchen, follow a healthy trend, have a reputation for good service and good product, and it is a national business that continually researches new products for its stores.

The Hamiltons’ second store was in Imperial Beach, where he now has two. When he had only three or four stores, he worked in them alongside his employees. Now, he pretty much concerns himself with the administrative work. At one time, he had 20 of the sandwich shops. He recently sold six of them, including those on North Island, but he keeps alert for other more convenient locations.

In all that he has done in his adult life, Hamilton says, “I can’t say that race has been a factor that has dampened” any pursuits. “I only got assistance. I had no problems purchasing property or securing financing. In San Diego, I don’t hesitate, I don’t anticipate any problems, and I don’t even think about race.”