I do not understand why Subway is so popular. I live in Australia. I have never purchased a Subway sandwich. About 5 times a year our bosses at work feed us Subway sandwiches. I went into a Subway ‘restaurant’ with my friends who went to get lunch and had a look around once.
I understand the appeal of KFC (I cannot make chicken like that), Burger King (making hamburgers I can do. But there is a lot of preparation to do it right ), Pizza (this is delicious and I cannot make it).
But Subway is sandwiches. I remember making sandwiches when I was 4. I like sandwiches. Sandwiches are one of the easiest possible things to make. Lord Sandwich knew this. Sandwiches have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Why on earth would I pay so much for something I could make so easily and better suited to me. I still love sandwiches. But sandwiches are what you eat when you have no other food in the house.— I was so busy today I could not cook. Oh well we will have sandwiches…
Obviously I do not think like the brains behind the Subway chain who are probably millionaires. I would never have dreamed this idea of chain restaurants selling sandwiches would have made so much money. That is why I am at a office job earning a bad wage.
Making sandwiches means having foodstuffs of sufficient variety in the house to do so. You may be thoroughly surprised to find that many people do not have several choices of deli meats, cheeses, relishes and vegetables in their homes at all times.
Mind you, I don’t eat at Subway terribly often but I probably eat a sandwich from a deli or sandwich shop chain far more frequently than I make one at home.
My point is that most people have some bread in the house and you just throw in there what you do have in the house. Big deal. If you want to make yourself the amazing sandwich go to a supermarket and buy some stuff.
If I wanted to make a typical Subway sandwich would require the purchase of multiple ingredients larger than I would need to construct a single sandwich. These ingredients would likely go bad before I wanted another such sandwich.
More importantly, going to the store to purchase all these ingredients and then make the sandwich would take a lot of time. From my experience, I have eaten Subway sandwiches during the work day when I wanted something filling to eat that could be consumed either at my desk, or on a park bench outside my office. Their food is also considerably less greasy than many othe rast food alternatives. It is not meant to replace fine dining.
It’s cheap, it’s quick, it tastes good, you can get it just the way you want it, and it’s much healthier than any other fast food. What’s not to like?
My point was made better by madmonk. Deli sandwiches have a bunch more stuff in them than the average ham and cheese I’d make at home because having all that stuff in the house is expensive and impractical, and buying just the quantity I need to make one sandwich is absurd. A deli sandwich is definitely a different beastie from my at home sandwich. Especially something fancy like a cheesesteak or a meatball sandwich.
Subway is bloody expensive for what it is- a footlong basic sandwich is about AUD$8.50
Now, I don’t know about you, but I can get a medium sized roll for $1, a few slices of ham/turkey/chicken for $1.20 or so, a bag of lettuce for $1.70, a packet of Plastic Cheese for $2, and a bottle of sauce for maybe $1.80 or so- all for considerably less than a Subway sandwich, in other words.
As Madmonk28 says, it’s an excellent Office Food. It’s not Haute Cuisine, but it’s considerably better than, say, McDonalds.
I love Sushi, but 4 Sushi Rolls, a small mayonnaise, soy sauce, and a sachet of Wasabi will set me back nearly $10- I mean, I can buy rice for about $1.20/kg at the supermarket, and 100g of Smoked Salmon is $3.50- but Sushi is healthy, tasty, and also good for those of us who don’t get a long lunch. It’s worth a little extra to be able to buy your food, eat it, and still have some time left on your break for general non-workery, IMO.
I’m not getting your point; this requires:
- forward planning
- commitment to a choice of filling way in advance of consumption
- purchase of larger quantities of materials than are required for a single sandwich
- time
- effort
- storage of the unused remnants
- storage of the made-up sandwich
I’ve only ever patronised Subway once and it wouldn’t be my first choice of fast foods, but the appeal is obvious - it’s fast food; you walk in off the street, point at something that takes your fancy and walk out eating it.
Your argument that you cannot make pizza or chicken like the fast food outlets is completely arbitrary; you could do it if you applied sufficient determination - your level of determination clearly stops short of these goals; the level of determination that some other people have just happens to stop short of making a sandwich.
I eat a tuna sub at Subway more often than any other type. Part of this is because when living by myself, if I make up some tuna salad I often seem to have more tuna salad than I want for one meal. Sure, I can stick it in the fridge until later, but given that I ate out fairly regularly anyway; buying a tuna sub with lettuce, tomato, onion, (pickle), and (olives) was a good way to have tuna.
In general, a lot of the appeal is exactly what others have said–a vareiety of choices of meat and cheese and veggie toppings, assembled fresh in front of you. It isn’t that you couldn’t make it at home, it is that many people DON’T make them at home.
Forward planning, commitment and determination to make a sandwich ?
Is this a joke or have you swallowed a dictionary of buzzwords?
All the answers I am getting are similar to the ones I had from co-workers. As Martini said it is bloody expensive for a sandwich. I would not have dreamed people would pay money like that for a sandwich. Maybe it is much cheaper in the states.
I’m not in the USA
No; it’s not a joke, you’re just being obtuse.
-Forward planning: if you want a sandwich tomorrow and you have to buy the ingredients today, what else would you call it?
-Commitment: If you bought bacon, lettuce leaves and tomatoes yesterday, you’re pretty much committed to having a BLT sandwich today; you certainly don’t have the option to change to a sandwich filling that you don’t have in your larder.
-Determination: You have to actually make the effort to prepare the sandwiches; some people simply can’t be bothered.
What you just don’t seem to get is that for any given task, there will be a price that people are prepared to pay to have someone else do it; for the unique combination of (Person=You & Item=sandwiches), the price structure set in place by Subway is above that which you are prepared to pay; for Person=someone else, it may not be. In the same way that for (Person=you & Item=pizza), the price is within the range you are prepared to pay, whereas for me, it isn’t - I make my own pizza, because I happen to find it easy and the cost saving of making my own more than makes up for the effort of doing it.
In the states, I think you can get a 6 inch sub, a bag of chips and a soda for $5-6 USD.
If you’re at a Subway restaurant, you ain’t at your house, are ya? You’re out and about, shopping, hanging with friends, working, whatever, and decide you want a sandwich, you can’t exactly run back home and throw one together. This is the “fast food” aspect of it. People get fast food for its own sake, because it is often the quickest and easiest way to get food, not because they can’t make that food themselves. Subway is a fast food alternative.
Also, if cold cut sandwiches are an infrequent item in your diet, buying the supplies just results in waste. Who’s going to the deli to buy 3 slices of turkey, 3 slices of ham, 2 slices of cheese, then use 1/2 a tomato and 1/8 a head of lettuce to make their weekly sandwich?
Now, if someone went out 3 days a week to get a sandwich at Subway just to take it home and eat it, I’d question their decision making skills.
Here a Subway sandwich costs less than $5 for a basic sandwich.
If I tried to make the same sandwich at home, depending on my choices, I’d have to drag out a ton of stuff, clean it, slice it up, package up the leftovers (the lettuce, the tomato, the onion, the pepper, the mayo, the mustard, the oil, the vinegar, the cheese, the meat, te bread, the olives) and that takes considerable time and counter space. If I purchase all those ingredients, it’ll cost me a lot more than $5, even though my cost per sandwich would be less. But only if I want to spend six days eating the same sandwich every day. (six rolls in the package of bread).
Now if I’m making a bunch of sandwiches, for a picnic, or back in my school-lunch making days, this level of preparation and mess is acceptable. But on a daily basis, I just don’t want to take the time to drag out all those packets and bottles and containers and open them up and then reclose everything and put it all away. I’d rather spend my mornings on the Dope. I will make simpler sandwiches…bread, mayo, slice of ham, slice of cheese…or even the slightly more elaborate bread, cream cheese, dillweed, salt, turkey, cucumber combination. And my favorite sandwich this week is the one I make at work: I buy a half-pound each of roast beef and muenster for the store fridge, then run across to Panera for a toasted Asiago cheese bagel, grab a packet of mayo and a packet of mustard (for free) and run to the backroom and make a very good sandwich for very little money (especially if I buy the meat and cheese at the Westside Market on my way in to work).
But replicating the Subway sandwich I like, with all those healthy veggies, requires too much effort most days. And it is a proven fact that sandwiches just taste better when someone else makes them. Same holds true for omelets. I make a good omelet, and I’ll make one most mornings for my son, and he loves them, but I’d prefer to eat one someone else made!
So yes, a sandwich CAN be a simple, cheap thing to make at home…or it can be an elaborate production. And some days you just want to pay for the elaborate production.
It’s a sandwhich that someone else has made, that’s the point, the appeal. I’m in town, I’m hungry and I want to eat now. I see a Subway, a KFC, a Mickey Ds, and a Pizza Hut. KFC is greazy old chook that should be fed to the dogs, Mickey Ds requires about 10 Big Macs to fill you up, and Pizza Hut is not my thing. So, I grab a Subway.
Personally I only eat Subway when I’m away from home and living out of hotels with no cooking facilities, but the general principle is the same for people living at home.
Subway isn’t cheap but it’s not terribly more expensive than other fast food places - McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Pizza Hut, etc - and it’s percieved as a healthier option. Unlike McDonads where the sandwich combos are predetermined, you can choose what toppings you want on your Sub and you have a wider variety of choices open to you. When we eat Subway it’s because we’re after a meal that’s quick, easy and not too loaded up on the fat/sugar. We pay a little extra for that but it’s ok because we don’t do it all the time. Granted, we could probably get healthier food cheaper if we made it ourselves, but that’s not always convenient; the last time we dined at Subway was two weeks ago when we stopped for a late lunch because we unexpectedly ended up going on a long drive and didn’t plan ahead for meals. We could probably have stopped at a cafe or even a milkbar and had a sandwich made there cheaper, but once again we would have had fewer choices of topping, and I often find it hard to get exactly what I want on a sandwich and nothing more at those places. People always seem inclined to add mayo or tomato sauce or something else you haven’t asked for out of habit. Subway makes the sandwich in front of you and asks you what you want each step of the way so you have more control over what goes into it.
Forget the rest (though they are valid): simply put, a Subway sandwich is better than one I make at home. I don’t have the ingredients on hand, for one thing. And it would probably cost me nearly as much to make my own (by the time I buy all the ingredients, and factoring in spoilage) as it does to get one there.
And a true deli sandwich is even better.
Subways here in the Bay Area (elsewhere?) have had a special promo for the past 6 months or so. They have a “daily” special that’s $2.49. That’s pretty cheap. I think most sandwiches cost between $3.49 - $4.99. Perusing Subway’s menu, there’s no pricing; their prices must fluctuate depending on the franchise.
I prefer Togo’s to Subway. They’re more expensive @ around $5 per, but with the yummy avocado scoop to top it off – heaven!
What I don’t get it Quiznos. They’re even more expensive than Togo’s and provide smaller portions, IME.
Well, people have covered the fresh ingredients angle. I might note that Subway also makes their own bread in a number of different flavors, all of which are tastier than the loaf of whole wheat that’s been sitting in my kitchen for the last week or two.
It’s also true that a sandwich that has just been made is going to be considerably crisper than one I whipped up in the morning before going to work – especially if it has any sort of dressing on it.
They’re a decent sandwich and at least one of the flavors of the six-inchers is on sale every day for about $2.50. That’s about the best price for a decent sandwich you can get around here.
Over here Subway is significantly cheaper than McDonalds.