24 things you didn’t know about Subway

Subway surged in popularity around the turn of the 21st century, but it’s a much older chain. Founded by Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck, Subway opened its doors in 1965 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

When the first shop opened in 1965, it wasn’t called Subway. Instead, DeLuca and Buck’s restaurant was named “Pete's Drive-In: Super Submarines.” After a few name changes, including “Pete’s Submarines” (which sounded too much like “Pizza Marines” when said on the radio) and “Pete’s Subway,” the store finally settled on the shortened “Subway” in 1972.

Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck weren’t a couple of business experts or corporate suits — far from it. DeLuca was just a 17-year-old in need of money, and Buck was a nuclear physicist and family friend twice as old as the teenager. The young entrepreneur asked Buck for a loan to get started, which was only $1,000.

Fred DeLuca’s sandwich shop idea wasn’t meant to be his ultimate career path. The teenager intended to go to medical school, and Buck suggested starting a sandwich shop — offering a healthier fast food option — to earn some money for college. Their franchisor/operator company’s name reflects this, as they dubbed it Doctor's Associates Inc.

You won’t read this on the Subway website, but the first sub shop struggled. Contrary to common business practices, the company opened a second location soon after, mainly to increase brand awareness and project an image of success. Then they expanded even more, opening 16 shops by 1974. However, the pair had a goal of 32 stores, so they smartly began franchising to relieve their financial burden.

Boasting 32 stores in the mid-’70s was impressive, but that was still just the beginning. In the early 1980s, Subway had a total of 200 stores, and by 1995, that figure was 10,000. Today, there are more than 37,000 Subway restaurants in more than 100 countries, making the franchise the second-largest in the world behind only McDonald’s. (Subway actually eclipsed McDonald’s in the 2010s but is now back in the No. 2 spot.)

Big buildings can bring big challenges. When construction workers were building the 104-story skyscraper at One World Trade Center, formerly the “Freedom Tower,” the wait for a construction elevator (and the ride up and down) seriously cut into their 30-minute lunchtimes. As a solution, Subway teamed with the building company to open a temporary restaurant in a shipping container, which was moved higher and higher in the building as construction progressed. The store wasn’t profitable — the builder lost about $700,000 — but the endeavor was nevertheless deemed successful as it achieved its purpose of providing a convenient meal for the hardworking construction crews.

One of the best parts of Subway is the large assortment of fully customizable sandwiches, so unlike McDonald’s and the Big Mac or Burger King and the Whopper, there’s no signature sandwich at Subway…anymore! They used to have one, and as a hint, It’s still on the menu today. Give up? The answer is the BMT — today known as the Italian B.M.T. — a salami, spicy pepperoni, and ham sub named after the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit system. (Or “Bigger, Meatier, Tastier,” according to marketing campaigns.)

Today, your Subway sandwich size options are a 6-inch or footlong, but that wasn’t always the case. Back in 1977, when a smaller, six-inch sub was first introduced, it was called the “Snak” sub. However, the name didn’t catch on with customers, who referred to the sub by its measurements instead.

If you think Subway’s “six-inch” and “footlong” designations are just names, think again. A 2013 class action lawsuit questioned the size of Subway’s sandwiches. In response, the chain announced in 2015 that it would start measuring the length of its bread as part of quality control and include stricter instructions in its training manuals.

When it comes to fast food restaurants, Subway might be the king of customization. When you consider all the meats, veggies, cheeses, condiments, and other toppings and add-ons, there are a total of 38 million possible sandwich combinations. We didn’t do the math here — that’s a statistic announced by Subway in 2017 — and with all the new offerings they’re constantly rolling out, it might be even higher!

Subway has released some astounding statistics over the years. They claim to make 5,300 sandwiches a minute, totaling 7.6 million subs a day and 2.7 billion a year. That shakes out to an exorbitant amount of ingredients, including using 16 acres of lettuce every day!

Okay, there’s no actual “secret” menu at Subway, but because you can combine their ingredients any way you’d like, and the internet exists, some off-menu options have risen in popularity in recent years. You can get a “Pizza Sub” (marinara, provolone, parmesan, pepperoni, and a veggie) or a “Breakfast Taco” (grilled steak, egg whites, guacamole, spinach, red onions, sliced tomatoes, and chipotle sauce, toasted) or even get your sub made “Old Style” (when the sandwich artist cuts the bread from the top in a “V” shape, which is how the chain used to do it).

Although it’s now a Subway staple, fresh-baked bread wasn’t always available at the restaurant. The concept, which separated Subway from competing fast food joints, was first introduced in the U.S. in 1983. A “fresh out of the oven” marketing campaign followed to encourage folks to visit Subway, but we think the iconic, ubiquitous bread smell has kept customers coming back.

It’s never good publicity when an entire country rules that your bread isn’t actually bread, and that’s exactly what happened to Subway in Ireland back in 2020. To be fair, the Irish Supreme Court’s ruling wasn’t that damning; it’s not like they said the bread isn’t edible. But because Ireland’s Value-Added Tax Act of 1972 states that the amount of sugar in bread “shall not exceed 2% of the weight of flour included in the dough,” Subway’s rolls needed to be reclassified as a confection.

It’s now standard practice for Subway employees to ask if you want your bread toasted, but that wasn’t always an option. Subway didn’t start toasting their bread until 2005, around when the competition started to heat up (no pun intended) with rival chains like Quiznos and Firehouse Subs.

Subway has allowed franchises and franchisees to adapt their menus to fit local customs and preferences. As a result, the first completely kosher Subway opened outside of Cleveland, Ohio, in 2006. It mostly offers the same sandwiches, except there are no pork-based products, and they use soy-based cheese, to name a couple of notable variations. Similarly, Subway restaurants in India do not serve any beef products!

In 2014, a petition was circulated that accused Subway and other fast food restaurants of using an ingredient in their bread that’s also included in yoga mats and other spongey plastics. It wasn’t fake internet news; the chemical, known as azodicarbonamide, was actually found in these foods. However, azodicarbonamide did have FDA approval as a whitening agent in cereals and breads, so no laws were broken. Nevertheless, Subway vowed to remove the chemical from their breads and did so the very same year, with McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Wendy’s, White Castle, and Jack in the Box following suit. 

Is it worth going to Subway if you can’t watch your sandwich get assembled? Enough people apparently think so. In 2017, Subway introduced its first restaurants with drive-thru windows in the U.S. Not every state has them, though — the photo, for example, is of a location in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Until Jared Fogle’s astounding weight loss earned him a job as Subway’s first official spokesperson in 2000, they had only one previous celebrity endorsement — and it was actually a fictional character. Subway allowed their sandwiches to be prominently featured as a sponsor of Adam Sandler’s titular golfer in the 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore. Happy even filmed a commercial in the film!

Jared Fogle was just a guy who lost 245 pounds eating Subway sandwiches, but after an article was written about him in a college paper, he caught the attention of Subway, who made him their first spokesperson in 2000. As a result of Fogle’s story and advertising campaigns, Subway boosted its image as a healthier fast food option, and its sales skyrocketed in the early 2000s. You may have heard what eventually happened to Fogle: he was dropped by Subway after disturbing accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced. But that wasn’t the end of it. After pleading guilty to child sex tourism and child pornography charges in 2015, Fogle was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in federal prison.

Subway put itself up for sale in 2023 with a price tag of $10 billion. The company eventually settled on a $9.6 billion sale to Roark Capital Group, a private equity firm that also owns Arby’s, Dunkin’, Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, Hardees, Carl’s Jr., The Cheesecake Factory, and Jimmy John’s, among many other brands.

In 2015, Subway promised to gradually cut back on the amount of meat from animals raised with antibiotics — and vowed to go completely antibiotic-free by 2025. By the following year, Subway had already eliminated chicken with antibiotics, but beef and pork would take a bit longer, according to the company.

One of the more recent fast-food charities, the Subway Cares Foundation was launched in 2022. The independent, global nonprofit's mission is, according to its website, “to support organizations fueling the potential of today’s youth through hunger relief, tuition assistance, or mentoring and leadership programs.”