"Why are our sales plummeting?"
Because you didn't spend any part of that price hike on improving the quality of your food.
I went to a BBQ joint here in Texas a week ago. Got 3/4 lb of brisket and some potato salad for the missus and me.
To my surprise... It costed the same thing as 2 menu items at McDonald's. Like seriously?....
What's the point of going to subway and McDonald's if I can just get some BBQ at a restaurant.
(Didn't name the restaurant since I'm concerned this will make them realize they can charge more)
They thought they could charge the same money as real sandwich places. Lol.
I tried to actually go to one about 2 weeks ago. 5 workers, and they said - "oh he'll help you" and pointed to another worker. While the 4 of them stood next to the till gossiping about home life, and the poor dude just kept making Sandwichs for the online orders coming in. Only said hi to me once, after the 5th sandwich, I just told them I'm out of time and I'll go. They thanked me for coming in. They're just awful top to bottom. Bad corporate culture
There's a great last week tonight segment on subway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDdYFhzVCDM
Covers a lot of the insane shit they do / have done.
Apparently it was creating massive problems for their franchisees in becoming profitable. Ever go into a subway and have the owner practically force you to buy a cookie? They’re trying to make up for the cheap ass sandwich.
I quit going to Subway when they changed their whole menu. I went and asked for a spicy italian, blank stare from the employee, "uh, that's not on the menu". I said "Okay" and left. The menu wasn't structured to "make your own" thing not on the menu. Subway was never spectacular food but serviceable, quick, and fairly inexpensive. Not the case anymore, and the weird shit they've advertised lately looks awful. FFS, ad are supposed to make things look better than they are, so if these ads look better than the real thing, it must be dreadful irl.
Why are fast food places charging premium prices for slowed down food with cheaper ingredients? If I'm gonna spend over $10 or over 10 minutes at a place you bet your ass it isn't gonna be a fast food joint. It's gonna be a place with real ingredients and an atmosphere that isn't overflowing toilets.
Do these companies not realize their whole business model is cheap food for broke people? I lived off of $5 footlongs when I was a student. There's no way I could have afforded that with the prices they're charging now. And now that I do have disposable income and could afford their food I wouldn't go there anyway because there are way better options for the same price.
With Subway and it's franchise system, it makes me wonder if they aren't trying to intentionally tank 90% of the stores and rejig the whole operation, or potentially get rid of the franchises altogether. I have nothing to base this on, no education, no recent reading, nothing. I haven't stepped foot in a subway since the oughts, and I had a chicken bacon ranch and the chicken was chewy to the point it brought back the memory of my brother telling me to get pata tacos in Mexico City.
Good to know this is a global thing, Subway's Brazil operation has been on decline since they used the pandemic to raise their prices to absurd levels, all the ones near me closed down that weren't inside a shopping mall. Never ordered there again after they started charging premium burguer prices for their shit.
When your local chain restaurant/fast food joint starts going off-menu to entice people to come in, you know a business is struggling. Seeing Churros on the menu in a Mexican establishment is perfectly normal. Seeing Churros on the Subway menu is a bit alarming.
I think it's pretty clear the Subway execs (or the executives of their parent/holding company) foresee a recession and are doing as much profit-taking as possible while there's still time before the big crash hits and everybody tightens up their budgets.
For those who haven't seen it, John Oliver has a good bit on subway. https://youtu.be/jDdYFhzVCDM?si=AMkHeXR5yIpZCu3l
Exactly how I feel for with Subway specifically. Half their coupons don't even work for any of the chains we try in our city lol.
Considering the coupons are 3 footings for $18 and they're practically charging that for a single sandwich now, I can see why.
How their overhead is that unprofitable considering their food is mostly cold and ready to eat I'll never know.
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.
What's crazy is that it's still one of the cheapest fast food options
That's all the corpos and shareholders doing one last big squeeze before recession hits and the stock market crashes.
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 don't know if it's everywhere, but they got rid of the tortilla wraps and now you get a flat bread rolled up. I used to go all the time for wraps when I was traveling through small towns. At least at Subway you know what you're getting in a town of 500 people. Now that they got rid of the wraps, my business is done.
Was that price change overnight? Like its $14 today, and last week it was only $5?
I'd find it very hard to believe that a change of $9 at a shit sandwich shop would happen overnight. But lets call it $2 per year, that means it was from 2020 and that doesn't make sense either.
Lets call it $1 a year, with a covid bump in 2019. That would be from ~2016, with a bump in 2019, and assuming that this year is not included since you have not completed you fiscal year yet in the US. So that is a change over 8 years.
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