Saw an article recently, can't remember where, that basically said that the sole reason fast food was doing so poorly was pricing. That McDonald's was charging Texas Roadhouse prices, so people were choosing to skip McDonald's and go to Texas Roadhouse.
The best local sandwich shop in my town sells really good ones for $8-11. If Subway were still $5 they might be competitive. At $14 it sounds like the company no longer understands its product.
I can go to my local family owned Banh Mi joint and get a sandwich made with real meat and fresh bread for $6. For $12, I could add a boba tea and a side of fried dumplings.
That and they fucked up the menu so they’re pushing premade sandwiches over the “build your own” model they’ve had for years. I used to go to subway because I knew exactly what I wanted and asked for it, now their menu is unrecognizable.
Do these companies not realize their whole business model is cheap food for broke people? I lived off of $5 footlongs when I was a student. There's no way I could have afforded that with the prices they're charging now. And now that I do have disposable income and could afford their food I wouldn't go there anyway because there are way better options for the same price.
I tried to actually go to one about 2 weeks ago. 5 workers, and they said - "oh he'll help you" and pointed to another worker. While the 4 of them stood next to the till gossiping about home life, and the poor dude just kept making Sandwichs for the online orders coming in. Only said hi to me once, after the 5th sandwich, I just told them I'm out of time and I'll go. They thanked me for coming in. They're just awful top to bottom. Bad corporate culture
I quit going to Subway when they changed their whole menu. I went and asked for a spicy italian, blank stare from the employee, "uh, that's not on the menu". I said "Okay" and left. The menu wasn't structured to "make your own" thing not on the menu. Subway was never spectacular food but serviceable, quick, and fairly inexpensive. Not the case anymore, and the weird shit they've advertised lately looks awful. FFS, ad are supposed to make things look better than they are, so if these ads look better than the real thing, it must be dreadful irl.
Why are fast food places charging premium prices for slowed down food with cheaper ingredients? If I'm gonna spend over $10 or over 10 minutes at a place you bet your ass it isn't gonna be a fast food joint. It's gonna be a place with real ingredients and an atmosphere that isn't overflowing toilets.
When your local chain restaurant/fast food joint starts going off-menu to entice people to come in, you know a business is struggling. Seeing Churros on the menu in a Mexican establishment is perfectly normal. Seeing Churros on the Subway menu is a bit alarming.
I think it's pretty clear the Subway execs (or the executives of their parent/holding company) foresee a recession and are doing as much profit-taking as possible while there's still time before the big crash hits and everybody tightens up their budgets.
There is zero reason to go to Subway sandwiches over Jersey Mike's now that the prices are the same. Subway made sense when it was cheap. A decent sandwich, at a decent price, in a decent amount of time. Now it's an overpriced bad sandwich. Bye!
Good to know this is a global thing, Subway's Brazil operation has been on decline since they used the pandemic to raise their prices to absurd levels, all the ones near me closed down that weren't inside a shopping mall. Never ordered there again after they started charging premium burguer prices for their shit.
Subway.... Selling sandwiches that don't contain actual bread,. Does not contain actual cheese. And does not contain actual meat. But DOES contain more odd chemicals than DOW Chemacals makes
With Subway and it's franchise system, it makes me wonder if they aren't trying to intentionally tank 90% of the stores and rejig the whole operation, or potentially get rid of the franchises altogether. I have nothing to base this on, no education, no recent reading, nothing. I haven't stepped foot in a subway since the oughts, and I had a chicken bacon ranch and the chicken was chewy to the point it brought back the memory of my brother telling me to get pata tacos in Mexico City.
CEO: Why are those peasant stop buying? It can't be the price. It's just $9 raised, it's not even a whole $10, which is by the way, should be a coin by now.
Apparently it was creating massive problems for their franchisees in becoming profitable. Ever go into a subway and have the owner practically force you to buy a cookie? They’re trying to make up for the cheap ass sandwich.
I have no clue how they don't get it.
The selling point of fast food was always the speed, convenience and a price. They've been degrading all 3 of those selling points and now it's just not fucking worth it anymore.
But like it's nothing new, I don't belive I'm the only one, that for the last few years, every price hike just started picking less and less form the menu. And I'm not poor, far from it, I can definitely afford the price hikes, it's just, once it's 8x times more expensive than home cooking, the convenience no longer outweighs the shit ass quality. I hate paying as if I was at a fancy place and getting pure shit, might as well just go to a fancy place for fucks sake!
I quit them about 10 years ago when I asked for spinach on my sandwich and they gave me 3 small leaves of spinach for an upcharge. That and their instantly stale tasting bread made me done with the particular store and all Subway stores. Was a shame, because they were convenient to where I worked.
This is probably a good thing. I packed on a ton of weight when I was in college because fast food was really cheap. Things like dollar menu sandwiches, 5 for $5 at Arbys, $0.29 hamburgers on Sundays at McD, etc. I remember strategically buying bags full of fast food and putting them in the freezer because I couldn't make food that cheap. Reheated from the freezer tasted HORRIBLE, but it was cheap and I was broke. At these prices I would have made better decisions for my health.
Way back when they introduced the world's most earwormy jingle, I knew it would backfire on them. You can't always sell a product for one price, eventually the price has to go up.
I don't know if it's everywhere, but they got rid of the tortilla wraps and now you get a flat bread rolled up. I used to go all the time for wraps when I was traveling through small towns. At least at Subway you know what you're getting in a town of 500 people. Now that they got rid of the wraps, my business is done.
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Was that price change overnight? Like its $14 today, and last week it was only $5?
I'd find it very hard to believe that a change of $9 at a shit sandwich shop would happen overnight. But lets call it $2 per year, that means it was from 2020 and that doesn't make sense either.
Lets call it $1 a year, with a covid bump in 2019. That would be from ~2016, with a bump in 2019, and assuming that this year is not included since you have not completed you fiscal year yet in the US. So that is a change over 8 years.
Idk. Maybe paying people 14 bucks a hour just to make sandwiches cause they complain that they can't make money. Because they have no skills. Because they would rather make sandwiches and complain than get a job that pays better.