SPECIAL
FOODSERVICE
SECTION
OF A
BREAKFAST
SANDWICH
For Subway, building a better a.m.
sandwich is a true balancing act
BY SAMANTHA OLLER | [email protected]
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME
Most observers agree: Subway’s national breakfast
sandwich program was a total no-brainer.
You have a massive, 25,000-site-strong restaurant network.
You have combination ovens, introduced in 2004 and now
toasting 60% of Subway sandwiches, already in the restaurants and fully capable of much more. You have a heavy a.m.
focus from the quick-serve-restaurant (QSR) competition—
McDonald’s, Burger King, Arby’s—making some type of
response almost mandatory.
And then there’s the fact that, as of last year, 40% of
Subway franchisees were already selling some form of
breakfast offering.
“Subway is a perfect example of a chain that’s really not
doing anything [big] in breakfast; it’s just a matter of opening
the stores a few hours early,” says Shirley Mathistad, CEO
of New York-based Ripe Ideas Inc., a consultant who works
with food and equipment manufacturers to bring their products to market. “It’s really smart on their behalf: They’re
bringing in only a couple more ingredients and utilizing a
platform—a speed-cook oven—that they already have.”
But as any c-store retailer with foodservice experience can
attest, even a natural menu extension can become incredibly
complex to create and implement. For Subway, its main selling
point—customizability—also proved to be one of its biggest
challenges. Each component of the breakfast sandwiches had
to exist harmoniously with the rest of the sandwich offer. Meanwhile, the resulting product had to win over not only consumers, but also the bulk of the company’s franchisee base.
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Choose bread: light wheat English muffin,
flatbread or 6-inch or footlong sub roll
Choose omelet: egg or egg white
Add cheese: sliced American, provolone,
pepper Jack, Swiss or Cheddar; shredded
Monterey Cheddar or mozzarella; or none
Add meat: bacon, steak, Black Forest ham or
other lunchmeat
Add vegetables: green peppers, red onions,
tomatoes, lettuce or other vegetable
Add a sauce: sweet onion, chipotle
Southwest, honey mustard, ranch, red wine
vinaigrette or none
Heat and serve.
CONSCIOUS
OF HEALTH
For Subway, which has transformed itself into
the poster child for healthy in the QSR arena,
sticking to a nutritional framework is critical.
While it has provided the chain with a definite
marketing hook, it also makes the job of
executive chef Chris Martone a bit of a
balancing act.
Martone works with Subway’s chief
dietitian, Lanette Kovachi, on product
development at multiple touch points. He
consults a chart of nutritional parameters that
Kovachi has devised as he formulates a new
item. “If I’m walking the line, I get it to her and
talk through it with her on whether it’s
attainable or not,” he says.
Fat was Subway’s first healthy point of
differentiation, and one it highlights on
napkins and window clings with its “7 under
6” sandwich line of seven subs with 6 grams
of fat or fewer. It has since expanded this
healthy highlight to subs with fewer than 9
grams of fat; those 3 extra grams give
Martone some more wiggle room in
development, but not much. Fortunately,
many of the components on the subs—meat,
bread and vegetables—are already naturally
low in fat.
With the help of its vendors, Subway has
developed condiments that meet the low-fat
profile as well, but it’s not been easy. “Finding
sauces, ingredients and condiments that still
reach that goal is very challenging,” says
Martone. “If you don’t have fat, typically
[vendors] want to put sugar in there or corn
syrup.”
Sodium is Subway’s newest hurdle to
jump, and another conundrum. “Sliced
luncheon meats are notoriously high in
sodium,” Martone says. “With the products
on our current platform, they’re just very
challenging to start with. That’s going to be
difficult, but it’ll be interesting to see [how]
it all pans out.”
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SHAPE SHIFTER: Customers building their Subway breakfast sandwich can choose from any of three
different bread “carriers” (flatbread, sub bread or English muffin); either an egg-white or whole-egg
omelet; and any of the various meats, cheeses and condiments available on the sandwich bar.
While there are still a few operational hiccups to overcome, Subway
believes its new breakfast sandwich line
provides a foundation upon which to
build even greater success.
BUILDING A SANDWICH
For Subway, the goal of the “new”
breakfast program was to create an offer
that all of its franchisees could embrace.
According to Les Winograd, public relations coordinator for Subway Restaurants, Milford, Conn., the stores had
actually been offering breakfast at some
sites for years as an optional program
for franchisees, but it was “not for
everyone” because it meant opening
earlier, adding staff and dealing with
new products.
“Over the years … we’ve been
tweaking the breakfast program with
the hope of attracting more franchisees,” including simplifying operational demands, Winograd says. “We’ve
always felt it was a good time of day to
do business, and a lot of what we found
was that, for many franchisees serving
breakfast, it actually boosted lunch
business.” To maximize this relationship, both breakfast and lunch sandwiches are now available all day.
Meanwhile, those stores that didn’t
have a breakfast program already had the
operational foundation for one. “There
are people in the stores already, prepping
[for lunch],” says Winograd. About 60%
of Subway sales currently come from the
lunch day-part, and 30% from dinner.
“Why not just open the doors and let the
customers in?”
Today’s breakfast sandwiches began
the way many Subway menu items
did—in the mind of Subway’s executive chef, Chris Martone. A Culinary
Institute of America (CIA) graduate,
Martone has experience in a variety of
foodservice venues, including hotels,
restaurant chains and country clubs.
In his 11 years at Subway, he has overseen development of the current sauce
lineup, the introduction of cucumbers
to the topping bar, and sandwiches
such as the Blackened Cajun Steak and
new Tuscan Chicken Melt.
Subway is all about options, says
Martone, and every new product has
to incorporate that spirit of customizability. To this point, the national breakfast menu features five basic “builds,”
all based on an egg or egg-white omelet.
Customers have a choice of a low-calorie wheat English muffin, flatbread or
6-inch or footlong sub roll as the “carrier.” From here, they can add any of
the sandwich bar’s various toppings:
meats, vegetables and condiments.
In addition to a simple sandwich
of egg and American cheese, suggested
combinations include the Western
with Black Forest ham, green pepper,
red onion and American cheese; and
a Double Bacon with bacon and
American cheese.
Winograd says the real differentiator
for the program is its customizability.
Depending on the customer’s choices,
the sandwich can range from healthy (a
“Fresh Fit” egg-white muffin melt with
about 4.5 grams of fat and 5 grams of
fiber) to the indulgent (a footlong Double Bacon with extra cheese).
Despite its seemingly endless sandwich-bar combinations, Subway
expects customers to opt for the more
traditional ingredients; those costs
have been factored into the breakfast
sandwich’s price, Winograd says. English muffin melts have a recommended price of $1.75 to $2.25, while
footlongs on sub rolls are priced from
$4 to $6, depending on the toppings.
Subway has not made the breakfast
sandwiches part of its famous $5 footlong promotion.
Subway is also offering a combo deal
that highlights its recent introduction
of Starbucks’ Seattle’s Best Coffee
brand: a choice of English muffin melt
and a 16-ounce coffee for $2.50 at participating locations.
To keep customizability practical,
however, each component of the
sandwich bar has to have multiple
applications.
“Even if I’m working on a sauce for a
breakfast or lunch sandwich, it still has
to go on multiple proteins,” says Martone. “We don’t bring in one product to
go on one sandwich build.” This also
allows Subway to keep its footprint small,
especially important for its approximately
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for product information
3,000 c-store locations. Most of these sites
are offering the breakfast program, except
for those whose lease or pre-existing
agreement forbids it.
To further simplify execution, Martone has kept the build formulas for the
breakfast sandwiches similar to the sub
sandwiches; thus, if a 6-inch lunch
sandwich has four slices of bacon on it,
so does a breakfast sandwich.
EXECUTING ORDERS
Despite the footwork put into the development of the breakfast sandwiches,
some operational hurdles remain,
largely in on-site execution.
“We try to support [operators] with
[instructional] materials, give builds on
paper, show photographs, what oven
settings to use,” says Martone. “Honestly, that’s some of the most difficult
stuff to do.”
On a recent trip to San Diego, he
observed a Subway operator not following guidelines. “It’s challenging and frustrating because we put so much time into
it, and we want to make sure they’re
using the right toaster settings so the
product is hot,” he says. “We want customers to have a good experience, and if
[operators] are not following it at the
operational level, it’s very challenging.”
Subway uses combination ovens from
several vendors, although most are Tornado ovens from TurboChef Technologies Inc. and Manitowoc Foodservice’s
Merrychef 402 models. The ovens have
allowed Subway to practically double its
possible sandwich variations and have
inspired new items.
Because the ovens employ microwave
and dry heat, it can be a balancing act
to heat the egg and toast the bread adequately for operators who stray from the
recommended program settings. If you
overheat the sandwich, the microwave
can dry out and harden the bread. If you
underheat it, the egg is cold and the
bread is pale.
“We’ve heard anecdotally that people would like their muffin toasted
more and have more color on it for texture,” says Martone. “We try to walk
the line and make sure the egg is heated
and get a little color on that, and not
make it a very long toast time.” The key,
of course, is for operators to follow Subway’s and the oven manufacturers’ recommended program settings.
Darren Tristano, executive vice president of foodservice research firm Technomic Inc., Chicago, believes Subway’s
breakfast-sandwich program is a smart
move because it harnesses not only the
chain’s massive footprint but also provides franchisees with a means to
expand sales. However, he also sees room
for better execution at the store level.
Tristano recently Tweeted about his
sampling of the new breakfast sandwiches, listing a few weak spots in the
experience. He attempted to purchase
a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee on deal, but he was charged a nondeal price. The sandwich he received
did not look as advertised.
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“You’ve got a small urn of Seattle’s
Best Coffee that’s weak, not very hot and
is being made as a convenience for the
[Subway employee] who’s already there
in the morning to prep for lunch,” he
says. “Basically, it’s a convenience to the
franchisee to expand their sales, but
“Even if I’m working
on a sauce for a
breakfast or lunch
sandwich, it still has to
go on multiple
proteins. We don’t
bring in one product
to go on one sandwich
build.”
they’re not taking it as seriously as you’d
see with a McDonald’s.”
Winograd says Subway is addressing
operational inconsistencies through training and audits. The chain’s online University of Subway shows store-level and
regional staff how to make items according to formula. Restaurants are inspected
at least once a month to ensure operators
are following proper procedure.
“With any new-product launches,
there are always some growing pains,”
he says. “It’s just a matter of time for
adjustment, and then we will see everyone following the standard.”
Critics including Tristano have also
pointed to the lack of drive-thrus at
most Subway locations as another
stumbling block to the breakfast offer;
customers picking up breakfast on the
way to work may not be willing to make
the time commitment. But Winograd
says Subway has so many locations that
enjoy healthy foot traffic that the chain
didn’t feel a lack of a drive-thru would
curb the program’s growth.
From Subway’s point of view, the
breakfast lineup is simply the start of
even bigger and better things. Down
the road, it may consider other healthier
breakfast options that harness the combination ovens, says Winograd. It also
could be an ideal all-day breakfast
option for c-store operators.
“The program is unique in that it
is truly something for everyone,”
Winograd says. “This is really something I think is pretty unique to the
industry. It’s basically an omelet sandwich but it has enough variation available that it’s hitting a lot of different
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consumer interests.”