When Harvey’s Hot Sandwiches opens at Pitt Street Mall in November, it will feature the sort of luxe interior associated more with licensed restaurants than sandwich shops. With a $3.5 million design-and-build price tag, the fit-out is a far cry from the local deli installing a few bains-marie and a meat slicer to service sandwich-hungry lunch crowds.

You don’t need an accountant to calculate Harvey’s will need to sell wagon-loads of $19 chicken parmigiana sangers. “You’ve got to build them to last,” Harvey’s co-founder John Vissaritis said.

“Obviously, our model is about making a lot of sandwiches.”

Historically, Sydney sandwich shops were hole-in-the-wall operations or supplementary to a delicatessen. With cheap entry costs and no specialist chef required, they pumped for a couple of hours each day, but resided at the alcohol-free lower-yield end of the hospitality chain.

But the sandwich market is changing. According to a report on the Australian sandwich shop industry, published in February by market research firm IbisWorld, rising health consciousness and “foodie culture” are pushing sandwich shops towards more “gourmet” creations and salad-filled options.

Many sandwich shops still have a lower set-up cost than a restaurant requiring a full kitchen and a gas and an exhaust system, but the growing number of modern gourmet sandwiches means it’s increasingly important to go big (like Harvey’s), or have a unique point of view (like newcomer Sangcuary in Stanmore, which specialises in flavours inspired by the owners’ Indonesian background).

Vissaritis knows the old sandwich world, too. His grandfather opened a cafe in 1948 in the Sydney CBD, and the family of his business partner, Sam Loutfi, pioneered cottage loaf sandwiches in the 1980s. Harvey’s Hot Sandwiches is the breakout expansion star of the pair’s 2021 three-pronged hospitality play in Parramatta Square, where Vissaritis and Loutfis needed a concept to fill the third tenancy alongside Ruse Bar & Brasserie and Threefold Pastry.

Harvey’s successfully unshackled itself from the limitations of the traditional sandwich model by remaining busy beyond the lunchtime rush.

“That’s why we put ‘hot’ in the name,” Vissaritis says. “People are really smashing sandwiches at night … that’s the key driver of making hot sandwiches.” Harvey’s also offers salad bowls; it is working on a range of specialty drinks to build beverage sales; and it opens for breakfast.

“Being from a restaurant [background], we like to bring lustre, we like quality,” Vissaritis says. North American diners provided inspiration for Harvey’s, but Vissaritis says Australia has its own rich history in Greek cafes to draw on, not just for design but also menu options.

Meanwhile, All’Antico Vinaio, the Florence sandwich shop with famed long queues for its schiacciata, landed in Sydney last month, opening its first Australian store at the northern end of Pitt Street.

“In Italy, a schiacciata isn’t just a lunch option, ” says All’Antico founder Tommaso Mazzanti. “People eat it for lunch, dinner, or even as a late afternoon meal. It’s part of our food culture.” He’s hoping Sydneysiders will have the same attitude.

Mazzanti doesn’t come from a deli or sandwich background. “Originally, All’Antico Vinaio was a traditional Florentine wine shop where people would stop for a glass of wine and some Tuscan crostini. The turning point came when I had the idea of making stuffed schiacciate,” he said.

“At the beginning there wasn’t even a menu. People simply chose the ingredients they wanted. As the business grew, we realised we needed a menu, and the very first sandwich we introduced was ‘La Favolosa’ [with salami, pecorino cream and spicy eggplant]. It’s still on the menu today and remains one of our best-selling schiacciata worldwide.”

When Mazzanti says “worldwide”, he means it: All’Antico Vinaio now has more than 60 stores globally.

“In 2025, we sold over 5.5 million schiacciate in Europe and generated almost [$98 million] in revenue. We’re incredibly proud of these numbers … for 2026, our goal is to reach [$163 million] in global sales.

“Australia has always felt like a very distant market, almost impossible to reach. For years, it was one of those places I dreamed about but never imagined we would actually open in,” Mazzanti said. The signature Favolosa sandwich costs $25 at All’Antico Vinaio’s Sydney store, which, like Harvey’s, is open for dinner.

The new breed of Sydney sandwich operator also plays with the classics. At Good Ways Deli in Redfern and Alexandria, the salad sandwich tuckshop staple was reimagined with mushroom pâté, Maffra cheddar, carrot and pickled beetroot on house-baked sourdough ciabatta for $17. “A lot of food is memories,” owner Tom Pye says. “It’s a nostalgia thing”.

Pye says you need a few strings to the bow to make the sanga orchestra hum, so he leans in on his background in specialty coffee to keep the business ticking over early with beverage sales. He says the market will pay only so much for a sandwich: “Once you’re getting close to $25, people maybe would think twice, or only buy it once a week.”

Avi Labi agrees Sydney sandwich buyers are price savvy. The owner of South Dowling Sandwiches, which opened its Darlinghurst store in Olympics-era Sydney, recently calculated he had increased prices by only 30 per cent over the past 16 years. Most of the sandwiches are still priced in the teens.

Labi has some advice for newcomers to the market: Make sandwiches to order and stick with quality. “If it’s good, they’ll come.”