Subway Is Abandoning Customized Sandwiches for Simpler Menus

Subway is launching its new Subway Collection menu as a key departure from its historic “make your have” business design.

The new menu consists of a record of 12 sandwiches that consumers can get as is, which is the norm in most eating places but a significant modify for Subway. They occur in four teams: Italianos, chicken, golf equipment, and cheesesteaks.

The sandwich chain grew preferred for its custom made sandwiches created by employees ideal in front of customers, who could point to exactly which ingredients they wanted. “Buyers stroll into a Subway with the expectation that they will customize their sandwich… It can be the basis that Subway was designed on and the way it’s been for 60 yrs,” Subway explained in a push launch announcing the new menu.

Now, Subway is repositioning the menu to be extra like other swift-company dining places, inquiring clients to “believe in their culinary know-how, and believe in in the sandwich artists to develop a sandwich Subway thinks prospects will love,” the chain reported. 

The new sandwiches grew to become accessible Tuesday, although clients can nonetheless make substitutions or create their personal sandwiches. 

There are a couple of potential motives for the new menu. A standardized menu with much less focus on customization has the likely to make operations quicker for workers by lessening complexity. Exams confirmed that the new menu “sped up functions” and led to fewer issues from consumers, Subway North The usa president Trevor Haynes advised Insider at a press occasion.

Quicker services could guide to greater revenue volumes and additional revenue, Kalinowski Equity Associates president Mark Kalinowski told Insider. Subway has rather very low device gross sales as opposed with opponents like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, so the simplified menu could velocity up traces and possibly guide to far more gross sales. Subway’s 2021 menu refresh bumped sales following a downward craze and confirmed some hope for the chain, so a different much more bold change could be promising.

Creating a menu with pre-chosen solutions could also drive buyers who do want to customise orders to electronic orders. Digital orders carry on to expand across the industry, and the structure is “great for customization,” Kalinowski observed. Digital revenue are eye-catching to businesses thanks to greater margins, speedier preparation, and decrease expenses in maintaining eating rooms, as clients normally get the meals to go.  

Subway’s embrace of full customization kick-started out a craze that took above fast foodstuff, getting enormous with the increase of Chipotle and exhibiting up across the industry, from Sweetgreen to Cava. Chipotle in specific grew famous subsequent a similar assembly-line product where customers could level to ingredients and observe them come to be section of a bowl or burrito. Now, it truly is embracing the opposing trend in the field: simplification, Kalinowski claimed. 

It really is a “intelligent move” that could direct to superior consumer experiences and improved profits, Kalinowski advised Insider. Success in the approaching quarters will display if it can be plenty of to reverse Subway’s trend of closing suppliers and shedding franchisees.

Are you a Subway worker with thoughts on the new menu? E-mail this reporter at [email protected].