Our story begins with a colorful character that came to Provo from the East Coast in 1972 and opened a hole in the wall sandwich shop that built cooked bell peppers and steak sandwiches.  Sawdust covered the floor, tree stumps doubled as chairs, and the walls were covered with photos and stories of his even more colorful mob friends (hence he named it ‘The Italian Place’). 
 
After only nine months in business he got restless, and talked a couple of BYU students into paying him $10,000 for his used grill, fridge, and slicer.  The following summer, the new owners repeated a mob skit along the 4th of July parade route, which involved a hearse and a limo and some body guards walking along side eating Italian Place Sandwiches.  The body guards had to shoot assailants who were ostensibly dying for their Steak ‘n’ Everything sandwiches. They loaded the assailants into the hearse and moved on to the next block. The skit was the featured part of the parade on the 5:00 news and that 3 foot grill had to produce over 1000 sandwiches that day for the “after the parade crowd.”  
 
The new owners were Bob Gledhill and Jon Gunderson.  At the end of the school year, Jon sold out to Bob and his brother Mike and went back to San Diego to make his fortune in the outdoor sign business. Bob and Mike opened a second Provo store on University Avenue and another on 1086 S. State in Orem in 1974.  Customers who lived out of town kept asking if they could have their own store back home where they lived. This lead to franchised locations in 8 states by about 1977, and enough prosperity to support an open wheeled race car for Bob to drive, who was not yet fully grown up (it might have been wiser to buy some Italian Place buildings). Mike moved on to the furniture business and later a substantial internet gift business.  
 
In 1978 Bob had another college friend talk him into a mining business.  The local stores and franchise business were sold to an out of state franchisee, and the money went into mining.  As it turned out, the Italian Place money and other investors’ money went into the college friend’s scheme and he ended up going to jail for fraud. 
 
The new Italian Place owners struggled for various reasons, defaulted on their purchase, closed the stores and left town.  In 1980 Bob, and his wife Dianna sold their best car and used the money to buy back the Italian Place equipment at an auction for the 2 Provo stores and the Orem store.  They reopened those 3 stores and did fine, but Bob’s long time urge to get into full service theme restaurants, became the primary preoccupation for the next 10 years (The Underground, Caddy’s, Viva Spaghetti). When the leases were up on the 2 Provo Italian Places during the 80’s, neither land lord would renew because they wanted relatives to open their own sandwich operations in the locations. Gledhill’s didn’t have the time or energy to rebuild new locations at that time.  By 1990, The Italian Place was down to the one Orem store and an occasional franchise here and there. Gledhill’s were a little burned out on the food business, but kept the Orem Italian Place while Bob focused on real estate.   
 
Thanks to our dedicated manager of over 25 years Cathy Brown and 30 years of good employee’s, The Italian Place is still making a lot of great sandwiches!  We are thankful to have faithful customers who’ve been willing to deal with our seasonal dining room temperature, our retro shabby 70’s decor, and sometimes a little wait to get a sandwich.

In 2006, the Gledhill’s daughter and son-in-law, Chris and Tiffany Rueckert, left a promising career in Los Angeles with DeWalt/Black & Decker to buy part of The Italian Place Franchise Corp. With their young energy and hard work, we now have several new stores and are looking forward to more in the future.  We first went back to our Provo roots, then to American Fork after a 20 year absence, we’ve made our first appearance in Lindon and we’ll soon be back in Spanish Fork again! Thank you for your patronage, we’re looking forward to another 30 years of Steak & Everything’s!