Once again: this isn't an argument. Taco truck owners could also rationally want to demand that their employees work for Taco Bux instead of dollars. But they can't, because neither the law nor human decency recognizes the validity of that exchange. And so too it is with noncompetes. The relationship a Jimmy Johns retail employee has with their company will inevitably fail to satisfy the requirements for an enforceable noncompete. In particular: minimum- and near-minimum- wage employees by definition haven't been given consideration in exchange for agreeing not to compete, and have neither privileged access to a rolodex of customers nor access to trade secrets.

My opinion is that Jimmy Johns is in fact not concerned that their employes will start competing firms. Rather, they'd like to minimize employee turnover, which, unlike local sandwich business starts, is a metric they actually probably do track. And one vehicle they've found for minimizing turnover is in tricking their employees into believing they have fewer alternative jobs available than they actually do.