Subway has been around a while, and when they first hit the scene they offered a fresh alternative
on fast food. However, after years of flubs and self-inflicted wounds, this franchise
has gone a little stale. So here are 10 mistakes that will haunt subway forever.
Such A Thing As Bad Publicity
You might be thinking what's wrong with beautiful women in bikinis? Usually nothing at all,
but if you're trying to sell sandwiches to women you might want to think it through a
little. The marketing executives at Subway were apparently surprised when many women
didn't react well to being told that they should start eating Subway sandwiches right
away so they would be able to fit into bathing suits and tiny Halloween costumes. Given that
women are more than 50% of the population in the US, women are likely a big slice of
the fast food chains' customer base - so why did it go out of its way to offend? Clearly
the advertising team missed the mark with this one - did they really think the average
woman would appreciate the gentle prodding? Most people already know when they need to
lose a few pounds and know they aren't ready to slip into last summer's bathing suit. But
the last place they want to hear it from is a fast food restaurant that sells meatball
and Italian subs. Let's face it - Subway doesn't care if we lose weight as long as we eat more
of their sandwiches. The company apologized for this big, fat error, but the damage was
already done.
Missing The Target
Identifying and cultivating the right customers are fundamental parts of a successful marketing
strategy for any company. So it must have come as something of a shock to Subway when
the marketing executives realized they had been focusing on a customer base that didn't
really exist. To add insult to injury, Subway didn't discover this problem on its own; it
was pointed out to them by a business publication. When Subway first started, the lack of competition
allowed them to have a customer base that were willing to eat Subway sandwiches at the
given prices because there were few convenient alternatives for a quick and relatively healthy
sandwich at a reasonable price. However, times have changed, and it is now easy to get a
cheap sandwich anywhere because there is so much more competition in 2019. Think of all
the fast food chains with value menus and other promotions. The other problem with selling
sandwiches is that customers can decide to spend a lot less to by their own ingredients
and make their sandwiches at home. This has hurt Subway pretty badly because there are
no easy answers. The company will still be in a bind; even if it drops its prices it
will always be cheaper to make your own sandwiches if that's what people decide they want to
do.
Same Old, Same Old
Take away all the fancy logos, glitzy marketing, and enticing promotions and what any fast
food restaurant is left with is the menu. The menu is a restaurant's bread and butter
and can spell success or doom over the long run. Everybody knows that Subway makes sandwiches
and they don't expect the chain to reinvent the wheel, but customers do expect some creativity.
Subway is known for its classics like the Spicy Italian, Black Forest Ham, Meatball,
and Chicken Teriyaki. These are all good sandwiches, but it’s enough already. These classics
may be popular with loyal customers, but they aren't necessarily going to draw in new customers
with the basic varieties that the chain has featured for years. Tastes have changed quite
a bit in the thirty years since Subway arrived on the fast food scene. Even with many of
its sandwiches featuring highly processed cold cuts, these sandwiches were healthier
than much of the competition. However, customers have become much more aware of the healthy
choices that are available and demand these choices even from the fast food chains. There
is only so much Subway can do, because after all, it makes sandwiches and sandwiches are
pretty familiar ground for most people.
Expand And Die?
The Subway expansion reached its high-water mark in 2015 when it was reported that the
sandwich chain had more store locations than even the juggernaut McDonald's. The number
of Subway stores reached 44,000 around the globe, and the company was moving forward
with plans to expand this number to a whopping 100,000 stores! So what happened to these
ambitious plans? What happened was that reality finally set in for them, and the company's
executives realized too late that managing an increasing number of stores is a very difficult
thing to do well. If it weren't so difficult wouldn't other, more successful and experienced
chains have already done it? It turned out that maintaining the quality of its employees
and of its food became increasingly difficult as Subway got bigger and bigger in a relatively
short time. One of the biggest mistakes the chain made in all this was insisting on opening
locations too close to each other so at some point Subways were taking potential business
away from other Subways.
Send In The Clown
There are little mishaps that are quickly forgotten and then there are the mistakes
that can haunt a company for a long time. Then there is the egregious advertisement
that was meant to poke fun at McDonald's, but to many people the image of the McDonald's
Golden Arches morphed into a flat line seemed to make light of people dying. Let's be real
and stipulate that Subway in no way intended to show a lack of empathy or respect for grieving
families, but it doesn't absolve them from practicing spectacularly bad judgement.
This is what sometimes happens when people are scrambling to out-do each other or break
through all the noise and get noticed. This 2018 advertisement was panned by almost everyone
including advertising professionals and business outlets like Business Insider. With all the
negative press, you would think the executives at the fast food chain would have gotten the
message, but you'd be wrong. In response to the all the flak the advertisement generated,
the company's Chief Advertising Officer stood by the work. Inexplicably, the spokesman pretended
that the feedback the company received had not been so negative after all. This seems
like a case of willful blindness. When you're wrong, you're wrong, and Subway should have
admitted it and quickly moved on, but instead came off sounding inconsiderate and tone deaf
to its customers.
Putting A Footlong In Their Mouth
Subway's $5 footlong sub promotion was quite popular for a while, but it didn't remain
a $5 promotion, and this has caused the sandwich chain a bit of indigestion. This promotion
has been around since 2007 and has been popular with customers all along, but Subway seemed
to go out of its way to make it into a problem. The problems began when the fast food chain
changed it from a $5 footlong to a $6 footlong. As expected this price increase did not go
over well. The company was forced to explain that it was being forced to pass along increased
costs to consumer. This might have been the economic reality, but it didn't endear anyone
to Subway. After a few years of customers grumbling, Subway announced in 2018 it was
going to bring back the $5 footlong with a twist. The twist was that Subway HQ wasn't
going to require franchise locations to offer this price to its customers. This awkward
policy resulted in a hit or miss situation in which some customers could find the classic
deal, but others could not and were left frustrated. This was another ham-fisted decision from
the sandwich giant that could have saved itself a lot of grief. All it had to do was take
a little time to think through what it was doing before announcing it to the public.
Yoga Mats and Subway
Subway found a way to step in it again in 2014 when a food blogger publicized the fact
that the fast food chain's bread contains a chemical called azodicarbonamide. While
this chemical may sound a little scary, it is actually a fairly common ingredient in
foods and is used as a bleaching agent and a dough conditioner. Unfortunately, this chemical
has also become somewhat infamous for being found in a whole host of products such as
yoga mats. This chemical is found in products also sold by chains like McDonald's and Starbucks,
so why all the attention on Subway? This is a good question, but regardless, Subway's
executives promised to get rid of the offending chemical and kept the public up to date on
its efforts to do this. This sounds like a recipe for a public relations disaster. The
other fast food chains somehow escaped the kind of scrutiny Subway endured, leaving Subway
holding the bag to the extent that it is the only company associated with the offending
chemical. There is probably a cautionary tale somewhere here about over reacting to the
demands of one person blogging on the Internet. This is an over reaction that allowed a multi-million
dollar chain to become known as the one that was selling yoga mat bread to its customers.
Subway Drive-thru
Joe Pesci's character in Lethal Weapon II was not a fan of Subway's drive-thru because when
they invariably gave you the wrong sandwich, you were already halfway home before you discovered
the error. However, it seems that most customers would prefer the sandwich chain to have a
lot more drive-thru stores, but Subway seems unwilling to go along with this. The convenience
of the drive-thru window has long been a staple of fast food chains, so why has Subway seemingly
resisted what has proven to be a very successful part of the industry? Although there was apparently
at least one Subway in Los Angeles with a drive thru in the late 1980's when Lethal
Weapon II was filmed, as of 2017 only 10 percent or less than 2,500 Subway's have a drive-thru
window. The official story is that Subway executives have been concerned that ordering
a fresh-made sandwich with a variety of toppings would prove problematic, but these issues
aside, customers have made it clear they are willing to take the risk of getting too few
pickles or too much lettuce on their Spicy Italian subs. Why not give customers what
they want - especially if it would be good for business?
A Measured Approach at Subway
Customers just assumed that when they ordered a footlong sandwich, it actually measured
a foot long. In 2013 a lawsuit against Subway revealed that Subway had perhaps not been
producing a consistent product when it came to its bread. Some people claimed the bread
was often 11 inches or even less. Was this just sloppiness, an oversight, or a way to
save some money? This lawsuit was settled by Subway, and the fast food chain made an
earnest promise to make the size of their bread as advertised. But the settlement was
thrown out when an advocate group pointed out that the settlement really amounted to
nothing, so the judge reconsidered and decided to throw the lawsuit out entirely without
the issue being resolved - to probably zero peoples' satisfaction. Then, just when everyone
was sick of this whole thing, Forbes Magazine published a study that indicated that most
Subway bread had been about 12 inches all along. There may have been some differences
in length because of the shape of the bread, so it appears all of this was for nothing.
One wonders if Subway knew enough about its own products, shouldn’t it have defended
itself in this way?
Jared And A Subway Collide
For quite a while the unassuming Jared Fogle seemed to be the right choice for the face
of Subway's ad campaigns. It turned out the seemingly affable "everyman" could not have
been more wrong for Subway. In fairness to the giant sandwich chain, the people who hired
Fogle to help the company sell subs had no idea he would turn out to be a pedophile.
However, at some point they knew or should have known something was seriously wrong.
The company has been accused of knowing about Fogle's behavior or of failing to know what
they should have known. Subway fired Fogle before he was arrested, but the timeline of
what exactly the company knew and when they knew it is still murky. Fogle eventually pled
guilty in Federal court to possessing child pornography and traveling to pay to have sex
with minors. Subway was criticized for what many perceived as a weak condemnation of the
man. Clearly Subway just wanted to be done with Fogle and was reluctant to continue to
associate itself with him - even when it condemned him on social media. This was a debacle of
epic proportions that hurt a lot of people and four years later, this incident still
haunts Subway.
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