Fast food is losing the plot. If it isn’t cheap, then there is really no point.
I mean, the primary benefit of fast food is that you can swing by and get a prepared meal on your lunch break. You can’t really do that at a sit down place unless you order in advance. They lost the ‘fast’ part too, since they don’t want to pay the amount of people it takes to run their stores though. Now the only benefit they have going for them is their hours, and they’re slipping there for the most part, since most places are still running on reduced hours because COVID gave them the excuse to never bring their old hours back.
Also people really like that you know exactly what you’re getting no matter where you are if you need a quick bite.
Quit buying from giant corporations.
I can go to my local family owned Banh Mi joint and get a sandwich made with real meat and fresh bread for $6. For $12, I could add a boba tea and a side of fried dumplings.
A lot of smaller places only have like two options for going out to eat and one is a subway attached to a gas station
Food deserts are real, and they show you real fast how exploitable you can be.
Food deserts are real, and they show how onerous overregulation is.
All of the identical “I live in a food desert” comments here should be opportunities for entrepreneurship, but the costs of legally operating a food business are too damned high.
I don’t think that’s regulation bud that’s monopolies
How is a monopoly gonna make it more expensive to start a business? That doesn’t make any sense?
Agreed! The Person you Responded to is NONSENSE. It’s ABSURD that the ONE Company that owns everything you need to get Started would make it Expensive for you to Start!
Oh you’re talking about an upstream monopoly.
Is there a monopoly in food prep equipment?
Popeyes and Taco John’s at the Love’s.
Only works when you have local joints. That being said, I’m from Jersey, and I think we kinda pride ourselves on all things bread: pizza, bagels, and sandwiches. So when I hear motherfuckers getting Dunkin Donuts in the morning, Subway for lunch, and Dominos for dinner, it disturbs me.
Now, is there a time for Dominos? Absolutely. Is there a time for Subway? I guess you can be drunk on the afternoon, sure.
From jersey too and it blows my mind how anyone around here will choose to go to jersey Mike’s or subway over their local deli
We don’t have a local deli here in small town mid America unless you count the deli counter at the supermarket.
Honestly, I think grocery store subs are really the best bang for your buck. Makes sense, they want to get you in the door and buy groceries there.
I’ll actually use ShopRite in a pinch. I just know they’re slicing up fresh ingredients there. Anywhere that opens up a container and pulls out meat is a no go for me. But we are spoiled here in the greatest goddamn state on the world, our taxes getting us fresh meats and soft breads with flaky crusts, and a peach iced tea.
Well, good for you. The town I live in has a Sonic, a McDonald’s, a Mazzio’s pizza, two local Tex Mex restaurants, and… a Subway.
Milk tea where I am is 6 usd by itself (not incl tax)
Please bring me back to the 3 dollar milk tea timeline
And if you don’t have any local places nearby you can either break yourself financially by moving somewhere else or just go fuck yourself. I never realized how much shit was jacked up in the small country town I lived in until I moved somewhere with a ton of competition. Suddenly the prices were way better, it was surreal. Food was cheaper and tastes better. Hell my Internet was twice as fast for half the price!
My apartment, however, is twice the price for a third of the space.
It still took me a decade before I could move without fucking myself.
This comment was written in the early wee hours of the AM and I’m not entirely sure what I’m rambling about.
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)
Name the restaurant and give them more business. They deserve it.
Marketing only exists to screw you over
The more you see a product advertised, the less of their earnings are going towards making a better product
Yes. And fancy burgers around here cost between $11-16. We’re talking super fancy burgers, mouth watering medium-rare locally grown beef, crazy sauces you’re never heard of, actual fucking grilled onions, etc etc. and beer, they serve beer.
Meanwhile the fast food burger joint is basically the same price, but you get overcooked pink slime.
That and they fucked up the menu so they’re pushing premade sandwiches over the “build your own” model they’ve had for years. I used to go to subway because I knew exactly what I wanted and asked for it, now their menu is unrecognizable.
At this point better to disregard the menu and just start ordering, but only if you’re ok with those prices.
Most fast food places I go I’m able to “just order” without a menu. They haven’t changed their core items in decades - I don’t know why people treat menus as if something special is on it. Even people who rarely go - guess what McDonald’s the Burger Joint still got “cheeseburger no onions” and Popeyes The Chicken Place still has popcorn Chicken (extra breading hold the chicken)
THEY WHAT?
I don’t even eat at Subway, but nearly tripling the price in one go? My gawd.
It hasn’t actually been $5 in a long time. It was like $7 last time I went (a few years ago).
I go to Subway with an upsetting degree of regularity, but it’s the only place where I can get fresh vegetables as part of my meal in under 30 minutes. The cheapest footlong on the menu is the Spicy Italian (or whatrver their latest menu refresh is calling it) for $10.99. Any other sub is $11.99 and up.
Lmao I unknowingly liked their cheapest sandwich best
Five years ago I could get a foot long spicy italian combo with chips and a drink for less than $10.
You can get more reasonable prices per sandwich with coupon codes. For the ones near me, they almost always have a “FLBOGO” or “BOGOFTL” or “FTL1299” or similar variation to get two for the price of one. But YMMV and you have to be ok with leftovers if you’re eating alone.
You also have to order from the app to use these.
about 10 years ago subway replaced the ice cream shop at the local amusement park. the prices they had there were insane, and they didnt even have all the regular menu options. 20 something dollars for HALF a footlong. what a joke
No, it’s been incremental for a while now.
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
Not defending Subway overall, the price increases are nuts. However that experience of yours is definitely an individual franchise problem, not a “corporate culture” problem.
Never in my life have I seen a subway with more than 3 working people in it. I haven’t ate it in years but more often than not it’s just 1 guy.
Ya I just figured it was shift change or some bs. I don’t know, I left anyways and won’t be back either way.
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That, and slapping a fixed price on a staple product the business sells. Even with normal two percent inflation eventually there’s going to be disappointment when the price has to be raised.
59, 79, 99!
I miss that taco bell menu
It was McDonalds wasn’t it?
I’m not sure if McD’s did it (we didn’t have one in town when I was a kid) but taco bell lists it we a promo they launched in 1990.
https://www.tacobell.com/history
Talk about seeing my own mortality slip away before my very eyes. Ha!
No gimmicks!
No tricks!
You don’t pay till 1996!deleted by creator
“Guys this is really gonna bite us in the ass in thirty years”
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They thought they could charge the same money as real sandwich places. Lol.
I’m not gonna look it up, but who recently bought Subway and is now cashing in on tanking it so they can sell the corpse?
If you ever watch CompanyMan on youtube, it’s like 90% of all “The Fall of [Company]” involves either going public and then rapidly expanding, or “acquired by private equity firm then died in 5 years”
Its like the saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
By far the worst one is always the private equity/leveraged buyout. It always ends in failure for the company.
What happens to the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to the people making the buyout decision. If they can pad their wallets then who cares about what happens to the company?
It’s supposed to end in failure due to having all the money squeezed and sucked out of the company.
I hate that cliche’d, untrue, glurgey phrase with a passion. But your point is good.
The bread bought it. It’s not an in-bread operation.
“Why are our sales plummeting?”
Because you didn’t spend any part of that price hike on improving the quality of your food.
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.
Taco Bell used to be a goto, then they tried to get too creative and half their stuff became a sloppy greasy mess. Now you can’t go and simply get 3 soft tacos and a drink for under $10 and they seem to change the menu every other week.
BRING BACK THE 2 MENUS AT THE DRIVE THRU SO I CAN DECIDE ON MY ORDER WHILE THE DOLT IN THE MINIVAN IN FRONT OF ME IS ORDERING FOR 12 PEOPLE!
I really really want to be on your side, Taco bell has gone crazy on the prices and I hate it.
But, on the other hand, it sounds like you haven’t even had the crispy cantina taco meal and that’s not a life I’d wish on anybody.
Start looking at the … “Welcome to Taco Bell will you be using the app?”
And holy hell is their app a piece of shit.
Yep. Tried to add points with my receipt the other day, and it refused to access the camera to scan the barcode, and refused to give me a keyboard so I could manually input the code.
The only saving grace they have right now is that they brought back a $7 cravings box meal. Filling and only $7.54 with tax.
Yep. Tried to add points with my receipt the other day, and it refused to access the camera to scan the barcode, and refused to give me a keyboard so I could manually input the code.
But at least it ignores your preferences and makes the stupid “bong” sound when you tell it not to.
I guess I’m thinking more of fast food places: After they got cheap food market, they had to keep growing so they tried to be semi fancy to convince people to go there instead of restaurants. It was back when people had more money / lower cost of living. They got too optimistic. Now we’re back to wanting cheap cheap cheap.
Back in high school, which coincidentally were my weed days, the state tax in NJ allowed us to do the 4.20 meal: JBC, small nuggets, small fries, small frostee. They were all off the dollar menu (which I understand isn’t a thing anymore), and came to 3.96, with 24¢ tax. It was a beautiful thing and honestly sold itself. If Wendy’s, or any fast burger joint, were to bring back a 4.20 meal, I have to imagine some young stoners having a giggle and ordering it. And then, the ingredients and their ability to tug on people’s addiction centers, do the rest of the work.
I think they’ve realized that they’ve successfully trained poor people to not know how to cook and then there aren’t any options left if they all band together.
I wonder if there’s software that makes pricing cartels easier to form now.
Banding together is supposed to be economically unstable because anyone who undercuts on price is supposed to capture the market.
Drug cartels can punish defectors with violence. Is there some new mechanism legal businesses are using to punish pricing cartel defectors? Maybe it’s lawsuits?
There is zero reason to go to Subway sandwiches over Jersey Mike’s now that the prices are the same. Subway made sense when it was cheap. A decent sandwich, at a decent price, in a decent amount of time. Now it’s an overpriced bad sandwich. Bye!
Jersey Mike’s no longer does meatball subs :(
Okay, the meatball marinara sub at Subway, with provolone, olives, and pepperchinis, is pretty good. It’s not great, but it satisfies a craving. You’ve got me there.
It’s not a great meatball, but so few sandwich shops even have them these days. Jersey Mike’s used to have a great one. Quiznos had a decent one too.
Firehouse has one, but it’s not amazing either.
Whatever happened to Quiznos?
Quiznos operated on super-low margins, and had a really tough combination of events in the late noughties that killed it.
First off, their big advantage over Subway was toasted sandwiches, and then Subway added toasters, started the “$5 Footlong” campaign to under cut on price, Quiznos corporate got taken over in a leveraged buyout that transferred massive debt to the company, and then they tried getting customers back by sending out millions of “Free Sandwich” coupons they expected the franchisees to honor at their own expense, which they overwhelmingly refused to do, resulting in a massive consumer backlash and boycott. And then the 2008/2009 financial meltdown hit.
That was all in like 18 months. It was brutal. Over 90% of locations closed in just a few years, and a quick Google search shows only 153 left in the country as of June out of nearly 5000.
There’s a gas station on I-35 north of Austin I know of that has one still, but the menu looks like it’s pretty different.
It’s a shame because they were decent sandwiches. I knew a guy who opened a bunch of them in Houston in the late 90s jslust before they really picked up steam nationally. He was doing pretty well for the first couple years. He died before the collapse, but I think he’d gotten out of Quiznos by then and was doing Buffalo Wild Wings locations.
Damn, that sucks. They did have a pretty decent menu. Their sock monkey “any coupon works” commercial in the 00’s was hilarious.
Yeah when I go in for work there’s a Subway just in a plaza near where I work like 2 minutes away. I’d rather go to the Jersey Mike’s 15min away for maybe a buck or two more. Used to like JK’s but I think Jersey’s a better value. Also I really lime that pepper relish lol.
But yeah bring back the $5 and I’d probably partake every so often. Cuz then the price would better reflect the quality and expectations.
Jersey Mike’s sucks though. Like, abysmal. I’ve been to their stores against my preferences often enough that it isn’t even a single store problem, the food is just unpleasant.
Which is a matter of opinion, obviously, but all food opinions are subjective to begin with.
I like it, the ones by me are awesome. Subway sandwiches on the other hand are terrible.
Isn’t jersey Mike’s a right wing douche restaurant?
You might be thinking of Jimmy John’s.
No idea.
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.
Is that a nationwide thing? It feels weird over here, but yeah, it seems like a lot of the midrange/sit down restaurant small chains just never changed their prices.
The smaller restaurants kept their prices tracking actual inflation to maintain their customer base. Lately they have been enjoying increased business because of the nationals screwups.
The local Greek place $65.
The best taco truck in town is $55.
For $75 I can get my local family owned Thai place with leftovers for the next day.
DQ, McD, Subway, KFC, all run between $60-75.
For $70 I can even get my family chipotle and enjoy the guaranteed food poisoning a few hours later.
If I want to spend that much on a sandwich I’ll go to Jersey Mike’s.
Jersey Mike’s was recently purchased by the same company that owns Subway. Give it time and they’ll be the same shit quality.
It was Subway that was recently purchased by the investment firm that owns Jimmy Johns. Jersey Mike’s didn’t sell.
Oh Jimmy John’s already sucks, I’m fine then.
And then they’ll raise the prices even higher.
That’s unfortunate.
And get a much better sandwich too.
To be fair Jersey Mike’s footlongs have gone from $14 to $24.
That’s kind of implied
Love me my Ike’s
I’d rather got to Penn Station, but Jersey Mike’s is still pretty good.
Subway… Selling sandwiches that don’t contain actual bread,. Does not contain actual cheese. And does not contain actual meat. But DOES contain more odd chemicals than DOW Chemacals makes
Isn’t their bread considered cake in Europe due to the sugar content? Or is that just one of those stories?
it is, the complaint was made in ireland, and the courts agreed that it’s cake
Nothing more American than a cake sandwich 🦅 🇺🇸 🫡
It was considered to be cake by regulatory authorities in Ireland.
Ironic in that they bake their own bread in the actual store daily.
