I went to Subway for the first time and I struggled to see why its sales are plummeting

Subway has hit the headlines recently, from its menu revamp to a lawsuit over its controversial tuna.

Sources: Insider, Insider

Reports also say that its sales are slumping and that the chain is closing some stores, although Subway said that its menu refresh boosted sales this summer.

Sources: Insider, Insider, Insider, Restaurant Business

I’d never been before, much to the surprise of my colleagues and friends, so I decided to finally pay the sandwich chain a visit.

I went to a city-centre branch in Newcastle, northern England.

The center of Newcastle is brimming with Subway stores, but I’d never been to one before, even though there was one on my university campus. I always brought packed lunches, both as a student and when I had a job on campus.

Subway also faces competition in the UK from supermarket meal deals. Major supermarket chains like Tesco and Sainsbury’s sell a sandwich, side, and drink for generally £3 or £3.50 ($4.10 to $4.80), and dedicate large areas of their smaller-format city-center stores to these.

I went at around lunchtime on a Saturday, and though the company is popular with office workers and workers, it’s evidently busy at weekends, too. There were only two members of staff in, and I had to wait a while to get served.

This gave me plenty of time to look at Subway’s hefty menu. There was a lot of choice, but I went for Subway’s fake-chicken sandwich the TLC, which stands for Tastes Like Chicken.

In the UK, Subway has six main types of bread – I hadn’t expected there to be so much choice. I went for the nine-grain multi-seed bread – and of course, I had to get it as a footlong.

There were lots of meats available, but I noticed that the UK didn’t have the new ingredients recently added to Subway’s US menus. These included deli-style sliced ham and turkey, smashed avocado, and fresh mozzarella.

Source: Insider

The fake chicken was kept away from the meat, and it looked pretty good.

There were plenty of salad fillings to choose from, too. I went for lettuce, tomatoes, and black olives, with vegan aioli drizzled on top.

You could see a fridge full of peppers and cucumbers on display in the background, suggesting that Subway wanted to show off the freshness of its produce.

It all looked pretty well stocked, though a small sign referred to supply-chain shortages and said that some items may be temporarily out of stock.

It was fun watching the staff make my sandwich.

I added a drink and one of Subway’s famous cookies to my order to make it a meal. It came to £7.39 (around $10.20) – the same as it would have cost to get my sandwich with roast chicken instead.

The sandwich looked really good.

It was bursting with fillings – there were six slices of tomato and around 30 slices of olive. My friend said he didn’t usually get such generous portions of fillings in his Subway sandwiches.

I was surprised by how realistic the soy-based fake chicken looked. Subway seasons it to mimic its own roast chicken.

Source: Vegan Food and Living

And it tasted really, really good. The fake chicken was perfectly moist and could have almost fooled me that it was real meat. It also really complimented the other fillings I chose.

My main qualm was that I chose to have my baguette toasted, which seemed to loosen the seeds on top. This meant that a lot of them fell off before I had even started eating the sandwich.

The sandwich really filled me up – a calculator on Subway’s website showed that with the bread and fillings I chose, it came in at close to 1,000 calories – but I was still excited to dig into the cookies. My friend and I got a chocolate chunk cookie and a vegan double chocolate to share.

I think I preferred the chocolate chunk, but they were both delicious. The double chocolate was very sweet, and I was impressed to taste such a great dairy-free white chocolate.

Ultimately, I’m surprised that Subway’s sales are falling. The chain is ubiquitous with college students and dominates many city centers.

Sources: Insider, Restaurant Business

Most of the sandwiches were at least twice the price of the average supermarket meal deal, but this didn’t seem to be deterring diners. The location I went to was busy, despite its proximity to loads of stores and other restaurants.

Subway said that its revamped US menu boosted sales to an eight-year high, but the new ingredients and sandwiches weren’t brought to the UK.

Source: Insider

Despite this, there was still a lot of choice, and the ingredients looked much fresher than I’d expected, too.

As for me, my sandwich was delicious and I can’t stop thinking about just how good the soy-based chicken was, but I don’t think I’ll stop making packed lunches any time soon.