Subway 2011–

[rotuts]

my adventures at Subway were a long time ago , and there were few other options.

[IowaDee]

We have two options here..Subway and Pizza Hut.  Both are staffed by kids who seem to suffer from raging hormones.  As a result of this, getting an order right seems to be impossible.  As I'm trying to tell the girl what I want on my sandwich, she notices someone walking by.  I'm immediately forgotten as she asks her co-worker if she saw his cute butt?   I also notice that every Subway I've been in has the same odd odor.  Kind of a musty smell that makes me check out the veggies that are waiting to live on my lunch.  Often ask them to skip the greenery.

We often go to a Quiznos in a nearby town.  They have had the same employees for years and take an honest pride in their product.  Stuff is always fresh and the place is spotless.  Difference between Subway and Quiznos is day and night.  

 

[GlorifiedRice]

12 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

We have two options here..Subway and Pizza Hut.  Both are staffed by kids who seem to suffer from raging hormones.  As a result of this, getting an order right seems to be impossible.  As I'm trying to tell the girl what I want on my sandwich, she notices someone walking by.  I'm immediately forgotten as she asks her co-worker if she saw his cute butt?   I also notice that every Subway I've been in has the same odd odor.  Kind of a musty smell that makes me check out the veggies that are waiting to live on my lunch.  Often ask them to skip the greenery.

We often go to a Quiznos in a nearby town.  They have had the same employees for years and take an honest pride in their product.  Stuff is always fresh and the place is spotless.  Difference between Subway and Quiznos is day and night.  

 

 

Yes Subway has a "smell"!

I think its some sort of veggie preservative. Or, no, you know what  I think it reminds me of?

The smell of frozen meals which have peppers in them. You know that smell?

[IowaDee]

You may be on to something.  I like green peppers but one of my kids swears they smell like dirt to her.  She's fine with any other color but the greens....no way.   I have to ask her to make a sniffing run to her local Subway and report back.  

Edited March 2, 2017 by IowaDee (log)

[lindag]

Although I've never been to a Jimmy John's folk around here tell me it is head and shoulders better than Subway.  I have a Subway quite near, the JJ's is about 15 miles from me.

I never go to Subway anymore but there were times in the midst of summer heat that I'd stop in and pick up a sandwich for lunch (I'd go in the mid morning to avoid the lines that start about 11:30 some days).

When I was working in Portland we had a Quiznos in the building on the main floor;

I'd often stop in there for lunch rather than face the wind and rain (and possibly snow) outside.  Their food was very good and service was fast.

The only thing that irritated me were the twenty-somthings that had to pay for their four dollar lunch with a credit card! 

Edited March 1, 2017 by lindag (log)

[MetsFan5]

I simply cannot abide by subway. From the horrible, smelly bread to the pre- sliced bottom of the barrel cold cuts and the employees with little to no concern for cross contamination I honestly don't think I have ever eaten there. I've been there but won't eat there. Grocery stores make better sandwiches- at least they can be made to order with name brand cold cuts. 

 

[Tri2Cook]

Subway's not great. I don't think anybody realistically expects it to be great. But if you stick with the simple stuff, the basic cold cut type sandwiches, it's not horrible either. I think a large part of the popularity is, you can get a 12" sandwich with meat and cheese and stuff it full of as many veggies as you want for under $7 (a little more than that here in Canada). You can easily beat the quality but you can't beat the sandwich volume to cost ratio at too many other places, if any. For a lot of people, that matters. I tend to avoid it for the most part, even though I could hit the local Subway with a half decent golf shot from my house, but I'd be lying if I said I never go. Then again, the restaurant choices where I live are very limited.

[GlorifiedRice]

35 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Subway's not great. I don't think anybody realistically expects it to be great.

 

If Wawa and Sheetz can make great samiches...Subway should be able to.

[gfweb]

Not so impressed with Sheetz as I am with Wawa but yeah.  You get a decent hoagie , made pretty quickly, at a fair price. And sanitation is very good.  

[GlorifiedRice]

27 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Not so impressed with Sheetz as I am with Wawa but yeah.  You get a decent hoagie , made pretty quickly, at a fair price. And sanitation is very good.  

 

Sheetz has Muffalettas!

[gfweb]

1 hour ago, GlorifiedRice said:

 

Sheetz has Muffalettas!

Yinzer muffulettas don't count. 

[Tri2Cook]

Never heard of Wawa or Sheetz but if they sell 12" sandwiches with meat, cheese and as many veggies as you want to stuff in there with better quality than Subway and they aren't just as popular, they need to have a talk with their marketing department.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

7 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Never heard of Wawa or Sheetz but if they sell 12" sandwiches with meat, cheese and as many veggies as you want to stuff in there with better quality than Subway and they aren't just as popular, they need to have a talk with their marketing department.

 

I assure you Wawa is popular in areas where they have stores.  (Like here.)

 

[GlorifiedRice]

11 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Never heard of Wawa or Sheetz but if they sell 12" sandwiches with meat, cheese and as many veggies as you want to stuff in there with better quality than Subway and they aren't just as popular, they need to have a talk with their marketing department.

 

Wawa is the best convenience store in the USA, Sheetz #2

[gfweb]

37 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Never heard of Wawa or Sheetz but if they sell 12" sandwiches with meat, cheese and as many veggies as you want to stuff in there with better quality than Subway and they aren't just as popular, they need to have a talk with their marketing department.

You've described Wawa hoagies well. It's rare that subway gets much traction near a Wawa. They also try really hard to improve the lot of their employees. Admirable company. 

[Tri2Cook]

44 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

I assure you Wawa is popular in areas where they have stores.  (Like here.)

 

 

34 minutes ago, GlorifiedRice said:

 

Wawa is the best convenience store in the USA, Sheetz #2

 

15 minutes ago, gfweb said:

You've described Wawa hoagies well. It's rare that subway gets much traction near a Wawa. They also try really hard to improve the lot of their employees. Admirable company. 

Then what's the issue? With better options available, why does Subway need to be better? Just don't go to Subway. I live in a very small, fairly remote town in far northern Ontario, Canada. The options are extremely limited. Subway isn't great and never will be but it's here. The local store is always clean, the staff is friendly and attentive and the veggies are fresh. I know the manager personally and when I walk to work before 6 am every morning, she's already there baking the bread and cutting veggies. The lettuce, tomatoes, onions, things of that nature that require prep aren't coming in bags pre-cut and loaded with preservative, they're cut on site. I'm not trying to advocate for Subway or claim they're more than they are, I just don't understand the unhappiness over their not being better if there are better options readily available.

[gfweb]

@Tri2Cook, somehow these threads morph from one subject to another.  Subway in your neck of the woods sounds like a much better experience than in my area, where some of t hem are pretty gross.

[rotuts]

well I learned about Wawa, and Sheetz  

 

neither is even close to being near me  but ...........

[GlorifiedRice]

2 hours ago, gfweb said:

You've described Wawa hoagies well. It's rare that subway gets much traction near a Wawa. They also try really hard to improve the lot of their employees. Admirable company. 

 

@gfweb I was a Wawa employee. I was a Hoagie maker when we opened the King Street Wawa in Malvern. That was an IGA supermarket.

[MetsFan5]

@Tri2Cook please forgive my ignorance-- is your grocery store so limited that you can't have a made to order sub (sandwich) at the deli case? 

 

  I'm sure some of their employees work hard and are cognizant of health code regulations. 

 

  Personally, I don't buy the pre sliced deli meats, I have them sliced to order and to my preference of thickness. Or thinness as it applies but at the very least I know then when it was sliced and what brand it is. 

[Tri2Cook]

5 hours ago, MetsFan5 said:

@Tri2Cook please forgive my ignorance-- is your grocery store so limited that you can't have a made to order sub (sandwich) at the deli case? 

 

  I'm sure some of their employees work hard and are cognizant of health code regulations. 

 

  Personally, I don't buy the pre sliced deli meats, I have them sliced to order and to my preference of thickness. Or thinness as it applies but at the very least I know then when it was sliced and what brand it is. 

Yes, you can buy deli meats sliced to order. No, they will not build you a sandwich. But it doesn't really matter. I wasn't complaining about Subway. I rarely eat there, but I wasn't complaining. Our local Subway must be a shining example among Subways in general based on what people here are saying about their experiences. The sandwiches are what they are, not great, not horrible, but it's not dirty or staffed with ill-mannered health code violators.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

Subway locations vary a lot here. I grabbed a sub at one located inside the huge Duke Hospital Durham complex in a food court, that was not only good, but crave-worthy. This was four months ago, and I can't get the roast beef and cheese with lots of veggies, including alfalfa sprouts, out of my mind. The beef was probably top round, cooked rare to med rare, and very good and tender. 

 

In Subway's favor, they did remove the yoga mat component in their bread after public pressure.

 

There's a location near me, but I've never been there. I tried to walk there a while back, still thinking of the good roast beef sub I had in November. I got to the legal pedestrian crossing, and there are no sidewalks on the side of the street I needed to be on to get to Subway, and a very steep bank rises in front of the businesses on that side. Last Monday in a do-or-die frame of mind, I walked to a supermarket which required taking that route. I found that there is a six in wide curb that is flat on top at the foot of the embankment, and as queen of the balance beam some 45 years ago, this was adequate for me to make my way through on my successful grocery store mission. I will check out my local Subway soon, and hope they will be good. I doubt they will have alfalfa sprouts, because the Duke location is the only Subway I've ever seen that offers them.

 

I have had some gray meat experiences though. Ordering their version of a cheese steak is not recommended.  

[Toliver]

On 3/3/2017 at 8:10 PM, Thanks for the Crepes said:

Subway locations vary a lot here.

You are preaching to the choir regarding this! There's a Subway restaurant down the street from where I live (it's open 24 hours a day!) that I won't step foot in. I did once and the sandwich I ordered that they hastily threw together was an abomination. Now I drive out to the boondocks to an area under development where there's not many businesses except for a hotel and a Subway store. At that Subway, they take their time making the sandwiches properly so it's worth going out of the way to patronize the store.

 

By the way, I have never seen alfalfa sprouts in any of the Subway restaurants in my area. Sounds like you might have a good franchisee in that area.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

On 3/2/2017 at 5:26 PM, gfweb said:

Subway in your neck of the woods sounds like a much better experience than in my area, where some of t hem are pretty gross.

 

I went for a roast beef sandwich today at Subway.  I could tell while they were making the sandwich that it wasn't going to be as good as the one I got in the Duke Hospital food court. The meat was overdone and the veggies didn't look the freshest. I even saw the "sandwich artist"   put spinach on my sandwich that was slimy and should have been picked out, but I thought, what the hey, I'll pick it out when I get home.

 

I could not finish this sandwich I had been craving for four months. The bread was stale, and could not possibly have been made today. The meat, though almost grayish, was the best part. You could see the grain of the meat and it definitely came from a cow. 

The veggies were terrible and tasted weird. Is their such thing as veggie preservative? Their was definitely something in that sandwich that had no business being near food.

 

One good thing, though, that was the end of my Subway craving, probably for my lifetime. How can franchises vary so dramatically? I don't think it will be worth the risk to try another store ever.

[GlorifiedRice]

9 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

The veggies were terrible and tasted weird. Is their such thing as veggie preservative? Their was definitely something in that sandwich that had no business being near food.

 

 

Thats what I said, there is something on those veggies to make them look all perfect all day