The Subway $5 foot long sandwiches are selling like hot cakes.
What began as a weekend test ended up as a week-long winner in spite of the Recession.
This brought to mind pictures of 1929 Great Depression’s bread lines and unemployment lines.
(at this edit, I just read about the 44 billion loss incurred due to shoplifting in North America this year).
The foot long was originated in South Florida (incidentally, the second test was conducted on Commercial Boulevard, near a Vietnamese strip mall) , where retirees no longer look for a job (while their Baby Boomer counterparts are still plugging away, working per diem,
like the Village Singer who refuses to let her young replacement take over).
I like accidental marketing breakthroughs. Success stories from bottom up e.g. the Geek Squad at Best Buy. It is inspirational and kick starts something long dormant in me (I have given out lucky charms with each MCI sign up, ordered Fortune cookies with MCI Friends Around the World message inside, and gave out piggy banks at the Year of the Board events.).
Subway got its start in DC Metro, where people want to eat healthy in a hurry. Lunch crowds want mass customization, yet want it cheap and fast. Tough crowds. (And it’s very politically correct to pick up “to go” orders for your co-workers, who wanted to toss in “white chocolate chip” cookies).
The article was talking about food sharing, and how food brings people together.
Some even save half to eat later (to drive down consumption and cost).
Over time, along with sub sandwiches, some of my early observations about America have finally been validated: MTV, Subway sandwiches and Used book stores (soon to carry millions of titles due to the inevitable shift to digital E-books: think Good Will book-tiques).
In 1977, I took my singing group to the TV studio to tape my version of MTV (as long as you laid down the audio and video tracks,
some pan shots and dissolves, that was good enough).Now, you have MTV, YouTube and Hulu.
And used text books still cost a fortune (some web sites already rent out text books, slowly chipping away the pie).
Subway founders, like U-Haul and Kinkos founders, came right out of college, and their mindset weren’t formulated in McDonald U.
Subway success strikes a chord: it resonates among people who want to eat but not gain weight, enjoy fast food but not be in a hurry, search for fresh food but not self-serve.
Subway is no longer an underdog. It took McDonald and Burger King much longer to grow their franchisee network. And this Recession somehow gives Subway, and fast food in general, a boon, not a burst.
I know what I will have for lunch today after all this blogging. All I have to do is hold up my five fingers and say “wheat, ham no cheese”. And Subway grows from there, one foot at a time.
Thang Nguyen 555 
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