Subway has been the home of the "footlong" since 1965, but nothing expands as fast as
Subway has without knocking a few things over.
Here are a few mistakes Subway probably wishes it could turn into a recipe for special sauce
and keep secret — unfortunately, they're burned in our memories forever.
Subway invested lot in the image of Jared Fogle, who lost 245 pounds eating their sandwiches.
At the time his ads were first broadcast, they had a huge impact… but we all know
what happened next.
He took a page out of literature, and he went to prison for it.
“Again, 15 years in prison for Jared Fogel.
188 months.”
But hiring him wasn't the only mistake, because you could argue that Subway had no way of
knowing just what his deepest, darkest secrets actually were.
Their mistakes just kept coming months after Fogle's arrest, when the sandwich chain decided
to speak up.
“The company was quick to issue a statement, saying it ended its relationship with the
spokesman.
And a local PR expert says Subway had no choice.”
Considering the very serious accusations against him, this just doesn't seem like enough outrage
from Subway, does it?
When it came out that Fogle's charity — which was supposed to help obese children get healthy
— didn't get most of the donations it was supposed to, Subway didn't try to make things
right there, either.
Subway isn't the only sandwich shop in town, and over the years, they've only gotten more
and more competition.
Sure, when they first opened their doors, the idea that there was a sandwich artist
making your lunch right in front of you was pretty neat.
But according to Business Insider, they got so comfortable with those products, that set-up,
and that image that they forget they needed to keep up with the times.
In 2014, Subway saw a sales decline worse than any other fast food chain.
And that, analysts say, is partially because they were suddenly positioned alongside restaurants,
like Chipotle, whose food wasn't just fresh, but was ahead when it came to doing things
like sourcing antibiotic-free meats.
That wasn't even a thing when Subway started, but that doesn't matter.
It only matters that they failed to keep up with their competition and offer what people
want in a timely manner.
It’s that sort of nonchalant attitude toward customer desires and concerns that people
will never forget.
In July 2015, the same week as Fogle's downfall, Business Insider reported that not only did
Subway have more locations than McDonald's, but they were hoping to take their 44,000
stores and raise that number to 100,000.
And there's a reason McDonald's hasn't beaten them to it: Having that many locations can
cripple a company, especially the way Subway was going about it.
Darren Tristano of Technomic told The Washington Post,
"More people have money to spend, and they're choosing to spend a little bit more on better
concepts where they get a better product.…
Subway's strategy has only been to open more stores, and ultimately those stores just cannibalize
each other."
Restaurant Business took a closer look at Subway's expansion plans, and when they spoke
to franchisees, they learned something heartbreaking.
Operators were essentially forced into opening multiple Subway locations almost on top of
each other, because they were told that if they didn't do it, Subway would get someone
else who would.
The only way for them to try to protect what business they had was to open more and more
locations and spread that business thinner.
"It's really been a victim of its own success.
It's really saturated the market."
Let's talk about the menu.
Sweet onion chicken teriyaki.
Black forest ham.
Spicy Italian.
Steak and cheese.
Italian B.M.T.
Veggie delight.
Classic tuna.
“This is tuna.
I hate tuna, okay.
I refuse to get stuck with tuna.
OK?
Come on.”
Now, are we talking about the menu in 1989 or the menu in 2019?
Business Insider says that not recognizing evolving tastes has been one of Subway's biggest
problems.
When Subway first debuted some of these sandwiches, they were healthier than the competition.
But now, customers look at many of the sauces and lunch meats, and they're less impressive
now that we know more about how bad these heavily processed meats are.
It's odd that Subway has made the mistake of falling so far behind what's cutting edge.
Changing tastes is what they capitalized on in the first place, after all.
Subway kicked off their $5 footlong campaign in 2007, and if it seems like it's been around
for much, much longer than that, it just goes to show how connected the idea is to the brand.
People loved it, and that should have been a good thing.
But it wasn't.
In 2016, Subway announced all those subs were going to be $6, and people weren't happy,
says Grub Street, especially considering they were the same subs that had been $5 for so
long.
There was a lot going on behind the scenes of the decision, but the company's statement
on Twitter was quite brief:
"We launched the $5 footlong in 2007.
Since then our costs have gone up greatly, but we try to balance that with promotions."
More drama followed two years later with the announcement that Subway was bringing the
promotion back, sort of.
According to Business Insider, the deal that came back in 2018 was a $4.99 footlong.
But by September of that year, Subway backpedaled yet again and said they weren't going to be
forcing franchisees to actually sell subs at that price point.
It became a crapshoot as to whether or not customers could find the deal, and what better
way to make the franchisees look like the bad guy and leave customers with no choice
but to just give up trying?
It left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
There are a few things that customers expect of a massive fast food chain: That they're
going to get what they order, and that they can go into any location and get a consistent
product.
When a lawsuit filed against Subway in 2013 hit headlines, customers realized the sandwich
chain wasn't living up to either of those things.
The lawsuit claimed footlong subs were 11 inches or less.
According to Fox News, Subway originally settled the case with a promise that they were going
to make an extra effort to produce a uniform product, something it should have been doing
in the first place.
But that wasn't the end of the case, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute got involved
with an odd protest: They said the case benefited no one, except the attorneys that stood to
make a shocking $520,000 for suing the sandwich chain.
That got the case thrown out.
There was more to it — Forbes reported that the majority of Subway sandwiches were, in
fact, 12 inches long and that the dough used in every roll was exactly the same, it just
baked a little bit differently.
But no one remembers that part, do they?
They only remember that Subway got sued for ripping off the customer.
It's easy to argue that everything offends someone these days, but sometimes an ad campaign
just misses the mark so badly, all that's left for a company to do is apologize and
promise to learn from their mistakes.
Subway's bad at that.
Take one of their ads that showed up in the fall of 2014, when Jezebel reported that the
chain was trying to make, quote, "costume season" into an actual thing.
What were they talking about?
In a nutshell, Subway thought it was a brilliant idea to tell women they needed to visit the
sandwich chain so they could stay or get thin in time for Halloween
“Halloween’s coming.
You gotta stay in shape for all the costumes.”
And it's only gotten worse.
In 2018, they ran an anti-McDonald's ad complete with the Golden Arches and a narrator that
flatlines after saying "burger" a bunch of times.
Business Insider reported that consumers deemed the ad incredibly annoying, and complained
that
"...for anyone who has actually dealt with what a flatline means, [it's] highly disturbing."
Subway's social media apologized, often in a painfully condescending way, while their
chief advertising officer stood by the ads and claimed they were, quote, "encouraged
by the responses."
Do you have any emotional connection to McDonald's, probably one that goes back to childhood?
Do you think of going there for birthday parties, hoping for a certain toy in a Happy Meal,
or begging your parents to stop for McNuggets on the way home?
Of course you do, and that's because McDonald's made a huge effort to connect with kids on
an emotional level, so they would remain adult customers.
Forbes says it's one of the most important lessons anyone can learn from McDonald's.
Now, do you have the same kind of connection with Subway?
Of course not.
According to AdAge, an emotional connection with customers is what Subway has always been
missing.
It wasn't until 2018 that Chief Advertising Officer Chris Carroll decided that maybe it
was time to try and reach customers on that emotional level.
It took them a long time to catch on to what chains like McDonald's and Burger King had
always known, and it may be too little, too late.
When Bloomberg looked at exactly what was going wrong with Subway, they pointed out
a fatal flaw in their marketing: They were targeting a market that wasn't actually there.
Look at it this way.
Subway is affordable but their subs are adequate at best.
When they started, that was fine.
They were feeding people who didn't have a lot of cash with a halfway decent meal at
a decent price.
But now that there's more competition, a few things have happened.
There are people with more money to spend on lunch, and they're going to go somewhere
with better options than Subway.
Then, there are people that still don't have a lot of cash to spend on lunch, but do you
know what they're doing?
They're spending less money to buy the ingredients and making their sandwiches at home, because
sandwiches aren't something that need a ton of time, prep, or specialized equipment.
And those sandwiches?
They're far better than what Subway can offer.
The fact that the chain staked everything on a section of the market that's disappearing
is a major issue.
In today's fast-paced world, the half hour or hour we have for lunch is crucial.
It's not just for lunch, it's for errands, too.
Grabbing some food is secondary, and that's where the drive-thru comes in.
Why would you go and stand in line to order when you can swing through a drive-thru and
quickly be on your way to get something important done?
This is where Subway needs to catch up, and fast.
As of 2017, only about 10 percent of their locations have drive-thrus.
Though you'd think that ordering your custom sub from your car would prove difficult, customers
apparently love the convenience, and thanks to touchscreen kiosks, they still have total
control over whether or not their sandwich gets onions, pickles, or mayo.
But with less than 2,500 stores offering the super-fast ordering option, is it enough?
Probably not, because convenience is king, and once you have to park, get out of your
car, and go inside, it's just not fast food anymore.
As for the customers?
They'll go elsewhere.
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