Subway Is Abandoning Customized Sandwiches for Simpler Menus

Subway is launching its new Subway Collection menu as a major departure from its historic “develop your personal” business enterprise product.

The new menu consists of a list of 12 sandwiches that clients can buy as is, which is the norm in most dining establishments but a massive alter for Subway. They arrive in four groups: Italianos, hen, golf equipment, and cheesesteaks.

The sandwich chain grew popular for its custom made sandwiches created by staff ideal in entrance of prospects, who could issue to just which elements they needed. “Clients stroll into a Subway with the expectation that they will customise their sandwich… It can be the foundation that Subway was crafted on and the way it is really been for 60 yrs,” Subway stated in a press launch asserting the new menu.

Now, Subway is repositioning the menu to be additional like other rapid-assistance dining places, asking clients to “have faith in their culinary expertise, and belief in the sandwich artists to create a sandwich Subway believes shoppers will love,” the chain mentioned. 

The new sandwiches became accessible Tuesday, although shoppers can nevertheless make substitutions or develop their very own sandwiches. 

There are a handful of likely causes for the new menu. A standardized menu with significantly less concentrate on customization has the potential to make functions speedier for employees by minimizing complexity. Assessments confirmed that the new menu “sped up functions” and led to fewer queries from buyers, Subway North The usa president Trevor Haynes instructed Insider at a press event.

More rapidly service could guide to better gross sales volumes and far more profit, Kalinowski Equity Associates president Mark Kalinowski advised Insider. Subway has comparatively small device gross sales as opposed with competition like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, so the simplified menu could velocity up traces and likely direct to additional income. Subway’s 2021 menu refresh bumped profits right after a downward trend and confirmed some hope for the chain, so yet another extra formidable modify could be promising.

Producing a menu with pre-selected selections could also press shoppers who do want to customize orders in direction of digital orders. Electronic orders go on to improve across the sector, and the format is “excellent for customization,” Kalinowski observed. Electronic sales are beautiful to firms many thanks to greater margins, speedier planning, and decreased expenditures in sustaining dining rooms, as customers ordinarily just take the meals to go.  

Subway’s embrace of full customization kick-started off a pattern that took over rapidly foodstuff, starting to be enormous with the increase of Chipotle and demonstrating up throughout the market, from Sweetgreen to Cava. Chipotle in individual grew well known subsequent a related assembly-line design where consumers could stage to components and watch them turn into part of a bowl or burrito. Now, it’s embracing the opposing pattern in the industry: simplification, Kalinowski claimed. 

It can be a “smart transfer” that could guide to far better purchaser activities and improved sales, Kalinowski explained to Insider. Benefits in the upcoming quarters will present if it really is sufficient to reverse Subway’s pattern of closing outlets and getting rid of franchisees.

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