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Subway breakfast is pretty damned tasty, but it's doomed to fail. Why is it doomed to fail? One reason: No drive-thru.
One reason McDonald's is phenomenally successful at breakfast is I can grab a sandwich and my coffee and never interrupt my commute. With Subway, I have to park my car, go wait in line, then back in my car. It's too much of a disruption. You could eat right in the restaurant, but Subway's not a breakfast-y place. If people want a sit-down breakfast, they'll go to Bob Evans or Denny's.
Another point is the complete cluelessness of most Subway workers. I ordered the sausage-egg sandwich. The guy had to look 5 times at the "cheat sheet" on the wall of what could possibly be on a sausage-egg sandwich. Sigh.
While I'm on Subway - I hate when the people automatically put lettuce on my sandwich without me asking. I don't want lettuce!! I want spinach! This is as bad as restaurants only having ketchup on the table, or thinking that Pepsi is an acceptable alternative for Coke.
***
On Saturday, me, Becky, and Liam went to Si Senor, then new Mexican place in my neighborhood. It was awesome and I had the greatest dish ever: Shrimp, stuffed with peppers, wrapped in bacon. Oh my gravy, that was fannnnnnnnnntastic.
Pictured: Perfection. Not pictured: Me drooling.
***
Also, this:
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Gypsy Catcher
May 11, 2010 12:33
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I'm a big fan of the Subway breakfast, especially since there's a huge stack of $1 breakfast sammich coupons in our office kitchen. It works at the city level, in that I just get off the train, walk in and grab one, which would be the same as if I walked into the McDonalds next door for breakfast (which I've never considered because it's always impossible to prevent them from putting their high calorie mayonnaise based sauce onto all their breakfast sammiches, and the lines are always long in there). I didn't think of the non-city/driving perspective, but I think the lack of drive-thru is something that helps Subway's bottom line in that they have more flexibility in building structure and don't have to worry about having a standalone building or at least an end unit where they can get the drive thru setup.
I read something a couple weeks ago about how being open for breakfast really only adds a very small expense, just some extra wages and electric bills, so it provides them a great margin. Can't remember if the lack of a drive thru was noted, but I'm sure they thought that one out and still were very confident that it would be a money maker for them. Their business model has always been wise and continuously makes wise growth moves.
I also will take watching a kid struggle to figure out how to make something, and have it happen in front of me, rather than them making it virtually out of plain view where they can put together the sandwich in whatever unsanitary/ball-scratching/nose blowing/ungloved way they'd like. That's one of the reasons I've always preferred Subway...and Paninis....mmmm, Paninis. They have a knock off Paninis in my neighborhood. It's nowhere near as awesome as the real thing. They don't have a knock off Billy Meade karaoke singer at Full Shilling, as far as I know, so you need to remind them of the goodness they enjoyed that fateful January 2007 evening.
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I agree with your "in the city" point. This definitely is more adapted to an urban walking atmosphere.
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Gypsy Catcher
May 11, 2010 14:47
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Yeah, maybe the mentality was that it would be a wash outside of cities and a profit in cities, so a net gain. Subway seems to like to keep things pretty uniform but given what you said, if the franchises outside the city don't see an added benefit, they could scale it back. Subway probably realized they have to maximize the value their getting out of their higher rent city stores and found this and applied it straight across the board.
There's already a good percentage of the office who are getting a Subway breakfast sammich from there regularly since it started. Could be the coupons, but most people seem positive enough about it to go there enough to make it pretty profitable for the stores here.
They also have the benefit of being seen as the healthier option. So they could pick up people who feel like they're preemptively saving calories to be spent on their lunchtime Double Down and dinnertime Whopper
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Si Senor is delicious! That's all I can offer to this conversation, as I have not tried Subway breakfast YET.
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Phil should totally be the "Jared" for the Subway breakfast commercials.
I can see it now...
"I've saved up calories on this healthy breakfast, plus, Subway encourages me to walk instead of drive to work! So I can drink more beers at happy hour!"
Then the scene switches to Phil entering a bar to join Billy - who already has a head start on the beer drinking and is up on the karaoke stage!
Classic :)
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