If it’s really franchised, the parent corporation doesn’t have control of store closings, does it?
When I used to work in Downtown Las Vegas, they opened a Quiznos in the area and it was really popular among the locals who worked in that area - for about a month.
Then it went downhill really fast.
Most complained about price being a bit high, food mediocre and they were sort of slow.
I haven’t been in that area for years, but would not be surprised if they have closed - their big money-making time was lunch, and by the time I stopped working in that area, I didn’t know anyone who went there anymore except maybe once a month, tops.
There was a Subway shop about two blocks further, and that was always popular and my guess is that it still is.
I wanted to like Quiznos. I tried hard. But it just plain didn’t taste good. Ours closed not long ago too. The bread was weird. It was like air coated in spices. And the sauces. They had all of these yummy-sounding sauces, but when you tried them, it just seemed like they drowned out any other flavor that may have been there, and they weren’t good enough to pull that off. It seemed like they took a really really low quality food and tried to dress it up to make it look and taste good. It didn’t work. And then it was overpriced on top of that. I never went there without leaving vaguely disappointed.
Subway is even worse, somehow, but at least they’re honest about how crappy they are.
I dunno, there used to be a number of Rocky Rococo’s Pizza places around here, once upon a time…
Upon googling it, I see there is still ONE in the state, at the other end of town.
Remember Rax? Baker’s Square?
My problem with Quiznos is just that it was always more expensive. For a while Subway was getting up there, but then they introduced their $5 footlongs.
Plus, all the weighing and everything adds up: the place is slow.
Also, Blimpie’s bread seems to be wider, and their ingredients taste fresher. But the main draw was that they were on campus.
I thought that I had travelled pretty extensively, but I have never heard of ANY of those three places…
I’ve pretty much quit going to Subway since they introduced those $5 footlongs. They’ve downgraded the quality of the meats and cheeses, and they no longer offer a decent cheese.
If I want to eat cheaply, I’ll fix something at home. If I go out, even to a fast food place, I want something that’s reasonably tasty.
Rocky Rococo (primarily selling pizza by the slice) expanded up to 130 locations in the Midwest in the 80’s before crashing back to a couple of dozen. They’re trying to expand again, now up to 40 stores.
Baker’s Square was similar to Perkins or any number of Pie focused chains. They absorbed Poppin’ Fresh Pies in the 80’s, I think (I worked in their pie factory briefly in high school as a weekend janitor). They also operate as Village Inn. They virtually shut down over the last two years and are down to one location in my area (a franchise store), from a handful I could think of.
Rax was a competitor to Arby’s in the Roast Beast field that was up to 504 locations in the late 80’s, early 90’s before utter collapse. There are maybe a dozen total now, if they still exist at all.
Jasons Deli gets almost all my sandwich business. I never liked Subway. Tried Quiznos and Schlotzsky a few times. Schlotzsky is pretty good.
One of the Quiznos closed here in South Dakota, …I them to come back!
Still at the newer one we went to on Saturday, as well. I hadn’t been in one in 20 months, which was when my job moved closer to home; used to be in walking distance from two Quiznos in opposite directions. Didn’t notice any difference in quality.
How to tell a newer Quiznos from an older one? Newer ones have the Subway-style “what else do you want us to put on your sub?” counter; older ones, which I prefer, just have the pepper bar. I don’t need a salad on my sub.
There was a Rax (think: lower-rent Arby’s) in Oberlin, Ohio, and a Baker’s Square (Friendly’s-style semi-greasy spoon, with an emphasis on cakes and pies) in Cleveland Heights, both of which closed at least eight years or so ago. Too bad. For what they were, they were OK.
Its the same as it always was. Same meats, same cheeses. At least, that’s been my experience. Not all meats are available for the limited $5 sub menu, but the Spicy Italian sub isn’t half bad (for $5). And AFAICT, the cheese selections have always been provalone, white american, cheddar, pepper jack and swiss for the sliced cheeses, and I think they have parmesan in a can and some type of shredded cheese as well.
At least with the tuna, it is not. The quality of the tuna at Subway is markedly lower than it was a few years ago, and as if that wasn’t saving them enough money, they mix more cheap mayo into it. My last few tuna subs were basically tuna soup.
I can’t speak to the meats, as I didn’t get them, but I would not be a bit surprised it the quality there has not deteriorated as well. Look, if Subway is dropping the price of subs, they have to make up the profit somehow. Dropping the quantity and quality of the ingredients is that somehow.
I stopped going to the Subway by my old apartment about 2 years ago when they were all out of Roast Beast three times in a 2 month period. Can’t keep a basic staple in stock? Then you SUCK at restaurant management and shouldn’t be doing it. The nearest Subway to me now is in a very crappy, very dingy Walmart. Not where I want to go for lunch.
They tried opening branches in Australia in around 2002; they were all gone by 2007. I ate there a couple of times and found the subs to be sloppy and messy to eat, not especially cheap, and they didn’t seem especially healthy.
There were a number of reasons for the brand’s failure in Australia, but personally I think a big part of it was that there’s just not enough room in the market here for two submarine sandwich chains and Subway’s got so many stories and so much market presence it’s a waste of time competing with them.
To add to the anecdote pile, one nearest my office here in San Antonio closed in the not too recent past. For awhile it was on my lunch rotation, but the employee quality dropped when a couple of long-time sandwich makers left and the new folks were fairly useless. Went back after a couple months and the storefront was empty. This is a location right next to one of the big Air Force bases in town here, and should have never lacked for lunchtime customers. Not really sure what happened, unless the new employees pissed off a bunch of the other regulars too. But that’s the only store that’s closed in town to my knowledge.
Sounds perfectly normal to me.
But where did it go?
Of course, when people like me and others in this thread stopped going to Quiznos partly because the service was so darn slow because of the weighing out of every single ingredient, Quiznos started becoming the embodiment of “penny wise, pound foolish.” Yeah, you might end up saving a couple dollars over the course of the day, but you lose a lot more than that because people got tired of waiting. Or because of the customer perception that Quiznos is a bunch of cheapskates. I can’t help but notice that the Quiznos in my town closed, while the local place across the street which jams as much meat as they can in every sandwich is still doing a roaring business.
Hey, my job is in data analysis. But counting beans is rather useless if nobody wants your beans.