Yeah they aggressively franchised themselves for decades and while there’s always been a push and pull with some places being shitty and some being OK, they’ve gone downhill at the corporate level too.
Subway basically handed out so many franchise licenses that locations were competing against each other. Even when it was introduced, the $5 Footlong promotion was basically a loss leader, but it's what most customers went for.
A lot of the locations went under and the ones that didn't usually survived by cutting every corner imaginable to make the numbers work.
I worked at one in the mall and the owner would purposely under order from Subways supplier's and would supplement it from Sam's Club. Technically it introduced a health risk because if there was a recall on any produce from a specific company there would be no way to tell which produce was from Subway or Sam's Club. He would also get 16oz bottles to replace the 20oz bottles that he got from Coke but would still charge the 20oz price. Only one person ever made a comment about it to me so he made a decent profit from all the people who didn't notice or care.
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u/Aquaman258 6h ago
Subway. It, at one time, was fresh and delicious. I hear private equity made it cheap and disgusting.