My first “real” job was at Subway in the late 90’s. When I was hired we of course had to go through orientation, which included a video about the history of the company. This is what I remember from it:
Fast food as a concept began when someone noticed that most people ordered their burgers with the same toppings. Therefore if a restaurant could quickly grill or fry all their menu items and have them assembled, packaged, and ready to go as soon as the customer arrived then the restaurant could serve more people in any given time period and thus make more money.
At some point someone noticed two things problematic with this approach: people wanted something other than burgers or fried chicken with a side of fried potatoes, and people often ended up customizing their meal anyway – in the case of most fast food joints this meant removing ingredients (no onions, no mustard, etc.). Thus Subway was born. People could get fresh, non-greasy food made exactly the way they wanted it: a bespoke customized sandwich with fresh(ish) veggies and meat. Clearly it was a hit as Subway grew exponentially in the 90’s and early aughts as people became somewhat more health conscious.
Now Subway is starting to adopt the standard fast food model: “Gimme a number 11” you say to the miserable worker behind the counter and they’re supposed to make a sandwich from scratch without further customer input. I suppose this has been focused-grouped to death and the suits in charge have decided this is what their customers want. Which is of course completely antithesis to their original business model. Thankfully the Subways that I’ve gone to since they switched their menu have, for all practical purposes, remain committed to the old way of doing things: I tell them what sandwich I want, they put the meats on and then I tell them what cheese, veggies, sauces, and condiments I want added to it.
We had to do the same and we were told that olives are just for looks and we were not to exceed 3 for a 6" sandwich, 6 for a footlong. I don’t know if they’ve changed their policy but to this day I ask for a “large handful” of olives added to my sandwich just to head off any potential problems.
You should search for a thread from a couple of years ago - there were a number of people who did not like that when they ordered a sandwich that was “just like the one in the picture” the person making the sandwich said they didn’t know what was on the pictured sandwich. I don’t get it but that’s what they said.
I suspect that they are the reason for subway adding these standard sandwiches - but even with them , I suspect Subway will be more like Wendy’s /Burger King be more friendly to customizing than McDonald’s
The story of Subway is strange and fascinating. I saw a documentary on it, I believe it might have been on the History Channel. It was started by a couple of people with no restaurant experience, no culinary experience really. Peter Buck was a physicist and engineer who had helped develop atomic power plants, and Fred DeLuca was a 17-year-old kid trying to make money to pay for medical school.
Peter was a family friend who suggested the restaurant idea to Fred as a way to get to college, and offered to put up $1,000 if Fred would run it. The restaurant was originally called “Pete’s Submarines”, named after Peter himself, but people would listen to radio ads for the place and think it was called “Pizza Marines”, and would come into the restaurant wanting a pizza. So the name was eventually changed to Subway.
The submarine sandwich was offered as an alternative to other fast food options at the time, which were all heavy, greasy, fried foods. The country was starting to become more health-conscious in the 60s, so the idea was to provide people something convenient that would play off that growing trend. The whole submarine sandwich concept was somewhat obscure, and you didn’t see them outside of delis in Italian-American neighborhoods in the Northeastern states.
The funny thing is that Subway wasn’t even the start of that trend. Mike’s Submarines was a small New Jersey sandwich shop that started in 1956, and inspired the Blimpie sub sandwich restaurant which opened in 1964, one year before the first Subway. Blimpie and Subway are still successful restaurant chains, as is the Mike’s Submarines restaurant which turned into what is now the Jersey Mike’s chain of restaurants (though that chain didn’t start franchising until 1987, decades after the other two).
I saw a customer melt down over that at Subway. Young woman very incensed at the old woman behind the counter that clearly didn’t have a clue what was on the advertised sandwich and the young woman refused to bend on it. “I’m not telling you what I want on it! I want one like that, there! Don’t you even know what is on your own menu!”
For the record I sympathized with the clueless old woman behind the counter making minimum wage. She clearly hadn’t been trained to do anything other than ask what people wanted on their sandwich. The young woman really needed to cut her a break instead of screaming at her.