They called an "emergency meeting" this week to solve the mystery

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.

they brought the quality down to match the 5$... did they bring it back up to be worth 14?! i kinda doubt it

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.

Fast food is losing the plot. If it isn't cheap, then there is really no point.

Why is it that fast food thinks it can charge for sit-down restaurant prices nowadays?

Quit buying from giant corporations.

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.

I went to a BBQ joint here in Texas a week ago. Got 3/4 lb of brisket and some potato salad for the missus and me.

To my surprise... It costed the same thing as 2 menu items at McDonald's. Like seriously?....

What's the point of going to subway and McDonald's if I can just get some BBQ at a restaurant.

(Didn't name the restaurant since I'm concerned this will make them realize they can charge more)

IMO, no sandwich on Earth is worth $14. Especially not one from SooubWay.

THEY WHAT?

I don't even eat at Subway, but nearly tripling the price in one go? My gawd.

The "$5 footlong" campaign was a terrible idea, because it just makes consumers aware of how overpriced fast food is today.

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

They thought they could charge the same money as real sandwich places. Lol.

I'm not gonna look it up, but who recently bought Subway and is now cashing in on tanking it so they can sell the corpse?

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 our sales plummeting?"

Because you didn't spend any part of that price hike on improving the quality of your food.

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.

For those who haven't seen it, John Oliver has a good bit on subway. https://youtu.be/jDdYFhzVCDM?si=AMkHeXR5yIpZCu3l

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!

If I want to spend that much on a sandwich I'll go to Jersey Mike's.

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.

They changed out their bread too, didn't they? Not in a good way like you'd expect because of the price change, but like, dough mixed with cardboard.

Five. Five dollar foot longs. Any, any, any!

They almost doubled the price of their stuff. No fucking way I am paying that. I'll pack my own sandwiches...

There's a great last week tonight segment on subway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDdYFhzVCDM

Covers a lot of the insane shit they do / have done.

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.

I went to a subway exactly once. Their bread felt like a sad sponge. I never set foot in one since.

Exclusive transcriptions from the meeting room:

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!

My issue is whether or not that nine extra went to employee pay.

If they didn't bump their workers' pay, fuck their price increase.

Exactly how I feel for with Subway specifically. Half their coupons don't even work for any of the chains we try in our city lol.

Considering the coupons are 3 footings for $18 and they're practically charging that for a single sandwich now, I can see why.

How their overhead is that unprofitable considering their food is mostly cold and ready to eat I'll never know.

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.

That and the ingredients are awful! Why would anyone go to subway when you could go to Jersey Mike's or the numerous other sandwich shops.

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.

That's all the corpos and shareholders doing one last big squeeze before recession hits and the stock market crashes.

Where's my Pubsub crew at?

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.

That's the same price as a succulent Chinese meal.

What's crazy is that it's still one of the cheapest fast food options

You're supposed to use the coupons they mail to you every month. I never pay more than $6 for a footlong.

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.

Do you want to read paywalled news but want to bypass the paywall? It's similar. Only difference is depending on who you ask, they like one and dislike the other—or it's like punching up or down.

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.

It is called inflation

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.