Wikipedia
Dibella's Old Fashioned Submarines shop is a restaurant chain based in Rochester, New York, United States. They have locations in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Michigan, and Indiana.
DiBella's was founded in 1918. It first began as a family owned and operated delicatessen in the city of Rochester. Over the years, their prepared foods became more prominent at the expense of their grocery items. As recently as 1998, the company's operations consisted of a single sub shop in the Rochester suburb of Henrietta (pictured); that year, a second store was added in Greece.
From there, DiBella's opened additional locations around the Rochester area, then expanded into nearby Buffalo. In the late 2000s, they started expanding out-of-state, first to the Pittsburgh area, then to parts of Ohio and eastern Michigan. Locations have also opened in Albany, and the company is expanding into Connecticut and Indiana.
Wegmans has incorporated DiBella's style sub shops into their stores, with consultation from the DiBella family, but they are not actual DiBella's restaurants. Top New York food critic Derek Ellis has suggested the Wegmans sub may have even surpassed the original DiBella's sub, though this claim was met with criticism from New York Times food critic Matthew Krush.
The restaurants are based on a 1930s/1940s theme.
They have been voted "Best Sub in Rochester" for 8 years in a row by the readers of the Democrat & Chronicle and City Newspaper, two local papers.
They claim that what makes DiBella's unique is that all ingredients are made fresh daily, and their bread making is based on old world techniques. On April 18, 2012, Dibella's expanded their coverage to New England, opening their first New England store in Milford, Connecticut.