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 went to a subway exactly once. Their bread felt like a sad sponge. I never set foot in one since.
I went to a Subway in the Netherlands last year. Luckily I was near my hotel, I had to rush to the toilet.
I think that’s because legally it can’t be called bread because of the sugar.
Congratulations?
You could probably say that to the majority of social media comments, right?
Congratulations!
I also had one of these the other day. I posted a comment about a place selling exotic, tropical fruit. I get a response from a user about how it’s too expensive but they live near the farm so they’d just drive there.
What’s their point? What are we supposed to do with this?
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!
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.
That’s the same price as a succulent Chinese meal.
they brought the quality down to match the 5$… did they bring it back up to be worth 14?! i kinda doubt it
Not only that, they lowered the quality at the same time. I remember when a subway sandwich was still kinda gross, but at least it was filling and you could have a decently healthy calorie dollar if you ordered right. Now, half the weight of your sandwich is in that super sweetened bread and the meat portions are tiny
I’ve been to Subway twice in the last twenty years. Both times the shop was understaffed and it took more than half an hour to get our meals, and they weren’t even good compared to other sub chains that cost less, let alone the local non-franchise sub shops.
The last attempt was a few years before COVID. I can’t imagine how bad it is now.
My wife and I walked into a Subway recently to use the restrooms. Not an employee in sight. Did our business and walked out without seeing a single person. I would have thought they were closed had the lights not been on and the door unlocked. Don’t know how they stay in business.
super sweetened bread
Fun fact: it’s so sweetened that the Supreme Court of Ireland (SCOI is a fun acronym) reclassified it as cake.
Also, Subway chicken is only 50% chicken.
To find out what the other 50% is, listen to the latest episode of my podcast Subway Exposure!
Just kidding, I don’t have a podcast. It’s soybeans.
Subway Exposure
I’m hoping that’s a different entity than the Subway Exposer
They rolled that, for tax purposes, it counts as a confectionary because of the high sugar content. They did not file that it is literally cake.
But what is cake if not bread plus sugar? 🤔
To me, it’s mainly gluten content. Cake is fluffy while bread is more chewy. You can have sweet breads and savoury breads. I imagine you can have savoury cakes too, but I’ve never had so I don’t know how good that would be.
I really don’t like subway, but they do have new chicken. Their old stuff was clearly not chicken. Their new stuff actually looks like chicken so I’m pretty sure the figure you are quoting is their old shit chicken
All of the above is concerning.
It’s soybeans.
If that’s true I really wish they’d just start offering a tofu option at Subway so I don’t just have to get vegetables in bread lol
Was it Taco Bell people were complaining that the meat filling isn’t ground all ground beef? I was like sweet I’d rather it be seasoned veggie delight anyway. Meat quality is not the draw of Taco Bell.
Yea. Taco Bell Seasoned meat has been a seasoned freeze-dried tofu and beef blend for decades now.
Taco Bell claims 88% beef with water and seasoning composing the rest.
They used to have a veggie patty. It was so bad, I regretted not just getting vegetables in bread.
Lol. Yeah some veggie patties can be horrendous. Like some of the ones from Aldi.
the tuna was also found to not be tuna.
That was just a rumor. Not that it isnt disgusting. I used to like it until i got a double meat version ans wondered wtf this pasty garbage was in my mouth. Disgusting!
I ordered a flatbread sandwich recently and the bread was extremely crusty and smelled old and bald. Subway is 100% in the gutter right now
Last time ive seen a subway sandwich that wasn’t gross looking was in the 90s
I used to get a roasted chicken breast sub from Subway every day. The chicken slab was pre-cooked and literally sitting in a bucket of warm water, from which they would pull it and microwave it for a few seconds. How in the living fuck did I ever think it was OK for chicken to be sitting in a bucket of warm water all day?
This was around the time they stopped baking their own rolls in-store every day, and somehow I was also OK with the stale rolls that replaced it. I guess I was distracted by their pedophile spokesman.
IMO, no sandwich on Earth is worth $14. Especially not one from SooubWay.
Oh man, you’ve never had a good Rueben then. Good corned beef, a pile of kraut, swiss, fresh rye bread (or sourdough), and that thousand island and/or spicy mustard. Grilled up and served with a pickle spear and some fresh chips.
Making one is not cheap, though not a lot more than your typical burger. But, a 14 usd price is reasonable when you factor in labor. I’ve paid more than that for a truly great Rueben where the corned beef was made in house, and the bread came from an attached bakery. Completely, totally worth twenty bucks.
Our closest deli that’s like the kind of deli in bigger cities charges 15 and some change for their Rueben that comes with a pickle, potato chips, and a drink. I ain’t mad at that price even though it makes it a rare treat.
Which, I get you, you led off with IMO which means you’re speaking only for yourself, so I’m not saying your opinion is wrong, or trying to change your opinion! Just giving my opinion on the matter of expensive sandwiches for my own tastes.
I’m willing to pay a decent amount for Schlotzkys tbh. But they’d have to exist in my area first.
I can either: A. Drive to fuckin’ Toledo Or B. Drive to Kentucky.
I had an amazing buffalo chicken sub from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in NYC that cost $16, and it was worth every penny. It was like 2 pounds of food, and they cut the chicken and grilled it right there in front of me. But that place and Subway aren’t even on the same planet as quality goes.
A footlong NY Italian at my local sub shop with like 4 kinds of meat and a ton of veggies on it costs $9. It’s better than subway in literally every way. The people who work there are chill and seem to like it too
If I could have the best burger I’ve ever had right in front of me right now, I’d pay ~$25 for it. The cost we pay for top-notch sandwiches is typically a search cost.
I disagree, there’s a sub place near me with a 16" sandwich with like 5 meats, 3 cheeses, and lots of toppings that costs about $14. The heft is noticable, even when I’m hungry I can only eat about half.
There are some high quality places out there, Subway has always been the McDs of subs. I feel they started to go downhill when they stopped cutting the v notch in the bread to stuff it full and just went with boring halves.
I will say to those thinking $5 should remain the price - we were okay with $5 subs a decade or more ago, but now asking more is too much? Inflation is a thing. $5 purchasing power in 1990 is now $12 in 2024. The argument shouldn’t be about the price increase, as it should have crept up this whole time. But the quality should have at least remained the same, and the workers fairly paid. The price of the sub is the least of the problems.
But the price increase kinda is a symptom of the underlying issue. For reference, the reason that subway subs were $5 for a long time was that the company was trying an advertising campaign to grow the brand, which it did amazingly well (honestly, far too well). However, those were not sold at a sustainable price, but whenever the company tried to raise the price it was perceived very poorly by the market. So they kept the price low for a long time, and eventually had to raise it but due to inflation (and decreasing the sub size to compensate for the low price before that), but the price increase was pretty drastic to most of the customers who often stopped going there.
In other words, the company kept the price down artificially to keep their stock price high, and foisted a lot of the actual costs onto the franchisees, of which they had tons. Which is obviously not a sustainable business model, and it’s why less people go to subway anymore.
They also allowed overcrowding. You could basically put a Subway right next to another Subway if you wanted. 3-4 in a single neighborhood. Corporate does not care if the franchisees make any money.
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.
I very rarely eat out but if I am going to end up blowing on 30 on two meals I may as well blow 45 on a local spot with a seat and a hefty tip to the waiter.
and a hefty tip to the waiter.
And I detest tipping culture, though I of course don’t fault the wait staff. I’d rather go to a local joint that pays its people appropriately…which are hard to find, admittedly.
I haven’t even considered McDonald’s because their pricing skyrocketed post pandemic when inflation was high. They saw other businesses justifying large price increases by blaming inflation and the idiot consumers accepting the lie, and just ignored the niche their product is in, cheap shit.
Before the pandemic to be able to get a McDouble, Spicy McChicken and Fries for $4 with tax. Granted, the fries were only $1 with a digital coupon, but that coupon was always there. It was like the 2 tacos for 99¢ deal at Jack in the Box, you just gotta use the app.
Now that same group of food is $9 and the coupons available are dogshit. 15% off my $10 meal is not a good deal when sales tax is $12%. I’m not really saving much compared to things like BOGO offers and $1 items like it used to be constantly.
There are a couple floating around out there, CNN/investopedia/Eat This Not That. The most scathing one I saw was from CNN, oddly enough: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/business/consumer-spending-travel-value-nightcap
found this, they all outpace the inflation rate so it’s just greed as always.
It’s sad that Taco Bell thinks it is gourmet Mexican Food now. Any local taco shop with Mexicans working in the kitchens will give you huge burritos for cheap. Without adding tofu to the ground beef.
Unless you get the promoted deals it’s starting to be like that everywhere. Near me if im getting two burgers and two fries, I spend less at five guys than I do at burger king. Why would I ever go to BK?
The recent Disney lawsuit reminded me of this. In order to get those deals, McDonald’s makes you use their app, and part of signing up for the app is agreeing to their ToS which has an arbitration clause
Yeah but there’s no way a judge will follow that reasoning. The response to the arbitration argument was that the argument was “unconscionable” and “no reasonable person” would think signing up for Disney Plus means they can’t file a wrongful death suit for a restaurant that has nothing to do with Disney Plus.
Also the lawyer who made the arbitration argument just got his client so much bad PR that i’m sure Disney Plus will take a hit over it.
I was with you until
Disney Plus will take a hit over it.
The average consumer is just so damn apathetic that nothing will happen
Selling your rights to Disney so you can get a cheaper burger is a uniquely American flavor of dystopia
Even FG is unreasonable.
My wife and 6YO kid went to FG last week and spent $27 on a meal for two and they split the fries.
A few ounces of meat, 50 cents of soda, a couple potatoes and an arguably 2 nice quality rolls. That meal cost them $5. Even with inflated labor it should be more like $15.
Five guys is at the very bottom of my “list of things that are so needlessly expensive that now I actively hate”.
Cause they’re so fucking good, and they use better stuff than most.
The moment that changes… will be the day I either go no-beef, or start rioting.
They’ve barely raised their prices in the last decade, they’re actually pretty fast, and there’s nearly always a bunch of people queued up.
Depends on the location too. For my location everything on the menu is $2 more than it is in the nearby, similarly-sized city. And there’s a high quality Wendy’s right next door.
I’ll take good Wendy’s at half the price of Five Guys.
Of course everyone is doing tiered pricing. You either use their apps or pay double. I think half of it is to get the app on your phone, and the other half is simply to make you jump through hoops for lower pricing. They all want to charge obscene prices, and then if you object, give you an option other than not going there. “Just install our app” could just as easily be “pat your head while standing on one leg and rubbing your stomach, and we’ll give you 40% off.”
I’m sorry, but fuck Wendy’s. Yes, capitalism is in decline around us all, but fuck Wendy’s for deciding they’re gonna be the first in fast food to push that envelope to full-blown-shit mode. And their burgers are just eh.
(Hey, pssst… so, quoting etiquette typically means you’re not using the quoting carrot on something not in the the comment you are replying to without noting it in the comment somehow. I was staring very confused at my replies inbox for, like, 4-5 read throughs of your reply, because its an opinion I could have typed, and couldn’t remember at all lol. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️)
Pretty sure it was around after Dave Thomas passed that the quality took a dive at many franchise locations, similar poor business decisions looking for short term profits over long term customers affecting many businesses these days.
The data is delicious for ‘em. Assists in world domination plans. Not really but they’ll eventually fine tune who gets deals real good IMO.
Connect to LinkedIn to see pricing
Income based fast food prices
Culver’s destroys fg for quality and price
Sometimes I go there just for an order of fries because they’re just that good. I can’t bring myself to pay $14 for a burger though.
Fucksake man, will you PLEASE think of the shareholders
Five guys has been expensive for a long time. The rest just caught up more recently.
I would kill for an in-and-out burger on the East Coast. You can get a burger, fries, and drink for less than an Five Guys cheeseburger.
Five guys has been bad for a while. Super expensive for a really greasy burger. I had to stop eating there several years ago.
I just stopped eating fast food altogether and started using our company cafe, prices at the drive-thru got absolutely ridiculous and the service got worse. I just eat a small salad and a drink, still costs around $6–7/day, but it’s way better than fast food prices. I could probably get it down cheaper if fruit and vegetables didn’t go bad so frequently, but our cafe’s rates are ok-ish, so I just make due with that.
prices at the drive-thru got absolutely ridiculous and the service got worse
And in the case of McDonald’s, the burgers and fries both taste like compressed napkins now. Idk WTF they’ve done to their burgers, but that’s not beef.
They added some food-grade sawdust filler and cut out the majority of beef with their latest round of shrinkflation. Their regular patties are so small and thin that they’re impossible to stay moist in th burger. There’s no more fat left.
This is exactly what subway is doing.
“A regular deli charges $16 for a sub/hero/grinder/hoagie/pickafuckingnameforalongsandwitch so we’re charging $14! It’s less they’ll still come the econ 101 book says they will! I’ll take my multimillion dollar bonus now tyvm.”
Yeah, but a regular deli makes a decent fucking sandwich and isn’t using the cheapest institutional ingredients imaginable.
Except a regular deli actually puts meat on their subs instead of lightly rubbing the sub with a piece of turkey then filling it with lettuce.
I believe it. The whole appeal of fast food is that it’s fast and cheap.
As a european, fast food is just like a category of food, and more of an occasional treat for me. Normally, I just eat my own homemade food, which is even cheaper. So I guess I see it a little differently, and fast food is allowed to be not cheap if it’s “good”.
Hell yeah, gimme that cancer patty and those artery clogging fries, baby! But make the obesity water size “for kids”.
“Fast and cheap” as in cheaper than buying precooked food somewhere else. Of course stuff you make at home will be cheaper.
The thing is that at least in my corner of Europe, fast food costs about the same as a filling meal in a sit down restaurant that doesn’t deep fry or microwave everything.
There is an exception but they only have 3 locations in one single town. They’ve barely raised their prices in the last decade, they’re actually pretty fast, and there’s nearly always a bunch of people queued up.
EUn ‘n’ Out?
True, McDonald’s is so expensive now that for 15€ I can go to Mc or I can go to a bib Gourmand restaurant for lunch (dinner is more expensive)
Was not my experience in the US. $1 fast food meals were a thing in 2016. A disgusting one.
For many Americans it’s just lunch. If McD’s costs $5 they’re buying. If it costs $15 they’re packing.
Might as well, I’ve only eaten at two Roadhouses, but they were damn good for a chain steakhouse
That happens when you just think of a bigger number and forget the customer somewhere down the line.
Also publicly traded companies and shareholder value. Everything could be much cheaper if not for shareholders draining every penny from companies. Edit: and CEOs/ managers of course.
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.
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.
Three hundred percent inflation isn’t a good thing ever.
Nobody’s making you overeat garbage food no matter what it costs lol. If it was free would you be 900 pounds? Come on man.
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?
i moved from FL to MA, i have few regrets, i do miss pubsubs though. and corn nuggets.
As sacrilegious as it sounds pub subs are very mid-tier to me. Perfectly acceptable sandwich just too much bread and always kinda dry unless I drown it in mayo/mustard after the fact. I’d rather go with their tenders and potato wedges honestly
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!
Yeah when I go in for work there’s a Subway just in a plaza near where I work like 2 minutes away. I’d rather go to the Jersey Mike’s 15min away for maybe a buck or two more. Used to like JK’s but I think Jersey’s a better value. Also I really lime that pepper relish lol.
But yeah bring back the $5 and I’d probably partake every so often. Cuz then the price would better reflect the quality and expectations.
Isn’t jersey Mike’s a right wing douche restaurant?
No idea.
You might be thinking of Jimmy John’s.
Jersey Mike’s no longer does meatball subs :(
Okay, the meatball marinara sub at Subway, with provolone, olives, and pepperchinis, is pretty good. It’s not great, but it satisfies a craving. You’ve got me there.
It’s not a great meatball, but so few sandwich shops even have them these days. Jersey Mike’s used to have a great one. Quiznos had a decent one too.
Firehouse has one, but it’s not amazing either.
Whatever happened to Quiznos?
Quiznos operated on super-low margins, and had a really tough combination of events in the late noughties that killed it.
First off, their big advantage over Subway was toasted sandwiches, and then Subway added toasters, started the “$5 Footlong” campaign to under cut on price, Quiznos corporate got taken over in a leveraged buyout that transferred massive debt to the company, and then they tried getting customers back by sending out millions of “Free Sandwich” coupons they expected the franchisees to honor at their own expense, which they overwhelmingly refused to do, resulting in a massive consumer backlash and boycott. And then the 2008/2009 financial meltdown hit.
That was all in like 18 months. It was brutal. Over 90% of locations closed in just a few years, and a quick Google search shows only 153 left in the country as of June out of nearly 5000.
There’s a gas station on I-35 north of Austin I know of that has one still, but the menu looks like it’s pretty different.
It’s a shame because they were decent sandwiches. I knew a guy who opened a bunch of them in Houston in the late 90s jslust before they really picked up steam nationally. He was doing pretty well for the first couple years. He died before the collapse, but I think he’d gotten out of Quiznos by then and was doing Buffalo Wild Wings locations.
Damn, that sucks. They did have a pretty decent menu. Their sock monkey “any coupon works” commercial in the 00’s was hilarious.
Jersey Mike’s sucks though. Like, abysmal. I’ve been to their stores against my preferences often enough that it isn’t even a single store problem, the food is just unpleasant.
Which is a matter of opinion, obviously, but all food opinions are subjective to begin with.
I like it, the ones by me are awesome. Subway sandwiches on the other hand are terrible.
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?
If you ever watch CompanyMan on youtube, it’s like 90% of all “The Fall of [Company]” involves either going public and then rapidly expanding, or “acquired by private equity firm then died in 5 years”
Its like the saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
By far the worst one is always the private equity/leveraged buyout. It always ends in failure for the company.
What happens to the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to the people making the buyout decision. If they can pad their wallets then who cares about what happens to the company?
It’s supposed to end in failure due to having all the money squeezed and sucked out of the company.
THEY WHAT?
I don’t even eat at Subway, but nearly tripling the price in one go? My gawd.
I go to Subway with an upsetting degree of regularity, but it’s the only place where I can get fresh vegetables as part of my meal in under 30 minutes. The cheapest footlong on the menu is the Spicy Italian (or whatrver their latest menu refresh is calling it) for $10.99. Any other sub is $11.99 and up.
Lmao I unknowingly liked their cheapest sandwich best
Five years ago I could get a foot long spicy italian combo with chips and a drink for less than $10.
You can get more reasonable prices per sandwich with coupon codes. For the ones near me, they almost always have a “FLBOGO” or “BOGOFTL” or “FTL1299” or similar variation to get two for the price of one. But YMMV and you have to be ok with leftovers if you’re eating alone.
You also have to order from the app to use these.
It hasn’t actually been $5 in a long time. It was like $7 last time I went (a few years ago).
about 10 years ago subway replaced the ice cream shop at the local amusement park. the prices they had there were insane, and they didnt even have all the regular menu options. 20 something dollars for HALF a footlong. what a joke
No, it’s been incremental for a while now.
