Subway Mission Statement Analysis (2026)

Subway occupies a peculiar position in the American fast-food landscape. It is simultaneously one of the most recognizable restaurant brands on the planet and one that has spent the better part of a decade fighting perceptions of decline. Founded in 1965 by Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the chain grew from a single sandwich shop into the world’s largest restaurant chain by unit count, a title it held for years before a prolonged period of store closures eroded that dominance. The 2023 acquisition by Roark Capital Group marked the most significant ownership change in the company’s history and signaled a new strategic chapter, one that is still unfolding in 2026.

Understanding where Subway is headed requires a close examination of the statements that ostensibly guide its corporate strategy. A mission statement defines what a company does today, while a vision statement articulates where it intends to go. In Subway’s case, both statements reveal as much through their omissions as through their declarations. This analysis dissects each statement, evaluates its strengths and weaknesses, and places them in the context of a business navigating franchise model overhauls, heightened competition, and the aftermath of a landmark private equity acquisition.

Subway Mission Statement

Subway’s mission statement reads:

“Delight every customer so they want to tell their friends — with great-tasting food, a wide variety of choices, and outstanding value.”

This statement has remained largely consistent through the company’s transition to Roark Capital ownership and into 2026. It is a customer-facing declaration that centers on three pillars: taste, variety, and value. On the surface, it reads as a straightforward articulation of a quick-service restaurant’s priorities. Beneath the surface, it contains both strategic clarity and notable gaps.

Strengths of Subway’s Mission Statement

The word-of-mouth framing is distinctive. Most fast-food mission statements focus on serving the customer. Subway’s statement goes one step further by framing success in terms of advocacy: the goal is not merely to satisfy a customer but to create an experience worth discussing. The phrase “so they want to tell their friends” introduces an organic growth mechanism directly into the mission. This is not accidental. For a franchise-heavy business model where local reputation drives foot traffic, word-of-mouth is arguably the most cost-effective marketing channel available. Embedding it into the mission statement signals that every operational decision, from ingredient sourcing to sandwich assembly speed, should be evaluated against whether it generates positive customer conversation.

The three pillars are concrete and measurable. “Great-tasting food” can be evaluated through customer satisfaction surveys and taste tests. “Wide variety of choices” can be measured by menu breadth and customization options. “Outstanding value” can be benchmarked against competitors on a price-per-calorie or price-per-sandwich basis. Unlike mission statements that traffic in abstract language about “excellence” or “innovation,” Subway’s three pillars give franchise operators and corporate strategists tangible dimensions against which to measure performance. This is particularly important for a system with tens of thousands of franchise locations where operational consistency depends on clear, actionable priorities.

The emphasis on variety aligns with the brand’s core differentiator. Subway’s build-your-own model has always been its most distinctive competitive advantage. A customer at Subway can theoretically construct millions of unique sandwich combinations by selecting from different breads, proteins, cheeses, vegetables, sauces, and seasonings. By placing “wide variety of choices” at the center of its mission, Subway reinforces the operational model that separates it from competitors who offer fixed-menu sandwiches. This is a mission statement that knows what the brand actually does well and is not embarrassed to say so.

Weaknesses of Subway’s Mission Statement

It contains no mention of freshness, health, or ingredient quality. For decades, Subway built its brand identity around the perception of being a healthier alternative to traditional fast food. The Jared Fogle campaign, whatever its eventual toxic legacy, established Subway in the public consciousness as the chain where health-conscious consumers could eat without guilt. The “Eat Fresh” tagline became synonymous with the brand. Yet the mission statement makes no reference to freshness, nutritional value, or ingredient integrity. This omission is significant. It suggests either that the company no longer views health positioning as central to its identity, or that leadership recognizes the gap between the “fresh” branding and the operational reality of a chain that relies heavily on pre-processed ingredients. Either way, the absence is conspicuous and leaves the mission statement disconnected from the brand’s most well-known public-facing promise.

The statement is entirely silent on franchisees. Subway operates almost exclusively through franchise agreements. As of 2026, the company has virtually no company-owned locations. The entire business model depends on the success, satisfaction, and operational competence of independent franchise owners. Yet the mission statement reads as though Subway is a single entity serving customers directly. There is no acknowledgment that “delighting every customer” requires first equipping and supporting the franchisees who actually prepare and serve the food. This is more than a semantic quibble. Subway’s franchise relations have been a source of persistent tension, with operators frequently voicing complaints about corporate mandates, fee structures, and insufficient marketing support. A mission statement that ignores the franchise relationship misses an opportunity to signal that corporate leadership understands who actually delivers the customer experience.

The value proposition is undefined. “Outstanding value” is a claim that every fast-food chain makes in some form. Without specifying what Subway means by value, whether that is lowest price, best quality-to-price ratio, largest portion size, or something else entirely, the statement offers no meaningful differentiation. In a competitive environment where Jersey Mike’s charges premium prices for premium ingredients and Jimmy John’s competes on speed and convenience, Subway’s undefined value proposition leaves the company occupying ambiguous territory. Is Subway the affordable option, the customizable option, or the fresh option? The mission statement does not commit to an answer.

Subway Vision Statement

Subway’s vision statement reads:

“To be the number one QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) brand in the world while maintaining freshness, nutritional value, and affordability.”

Where the mission statement focuses on the customer experience, the vision statement elevates the conversation to competitive positioning and global ambition. It declares Subway’s intent to reclaim the top position in quick-service restaurants, a goal that carries considerable weight given the company’s recent trajectory of store closures and market share erosion.

Strengths of Subway’s Vision Statement

The ambition is unambiguous. “Number one QSR brand in the world” leaves no room for interpretation. This is not a statement about being “a leading brand” or “among the best.” It is a declaration of intent to be first. For a company that once held that position by store count and has since ceded ground to competitors, the vision statement functions as both an aspiration and a challenge to the organization. It tells employees, franchisees, and investors that the company has not accepted its diminished position as permanent and intends to fight its way back to dominance.

It reintroduces the freshness and nutrition language absent from the mission. The vision statement’s inclusion of “freshness” and “nutritional value” addresses one of the mission statement’s most glaring omissions. This creates a conceptual bridge: the mission describes how Subway operates today (taste, variety, value), while the vision describes the brand identity it aspires to project (fresh, nutritious, affordable). The pairing suggests that leadership views freshness as an aspirational quality rather than a current operational reality, which is at least an honest assessment, even if it is not one that the marketing department would endorse publicly.

The QSR framing positions Subway correctly within its competitive set. By using the industry term “QSR” rather than “sandwich chain” or “restaurant,” the vision statement signals that Subway sees its competition as the entire fast-food industry, not merely other sandwich shops. This is strategically sound. Subway does not lose customers only to Jersey Mike’s and Jimmy John’s. It loses them to McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, and every other option available during a 30-minute lunch break. The vision statement’s competitive framing reflects this reality and sets the company’s ambition at the appropriate scale, a perspective that aligns with how McDonald’s frames its own mission and vision in terms of total market leadership.

Weaknesses of Subway’s Vision Statement

“Number one” is a metric without a definition. Number one by what measure? Store count? Revenue? Customer satisfaction? Brand recognition? Market capitalization is not applicable since the company is privately held under Roark Capital. Subway once claimed the top spot by sheer number of locations, but that metric proved to be a vanity number that masked declining same-store sales and franchisee dissatisfaction. A vision statement that aspires to be “number one” without specifying the yardstick risks repeating the same mistake: pursuing a growth metric that does not correspond to business health. McDonald’s, for instance, has fewer locations globally than Subway had at its peak but generates multiples of Subway’s revenue. Being “number one” requires a definition, and the vision statement does not provide one.

The statement tries to maintain too many positions simultaneously. Freshness, nutritional value, and affordability are three distinct value propositions, and maintaining all three simultaneously is extraordinarily difficult. Fresh ingredients cost more than processed ones. Nutritionally superior options often require more complex supply chains. Affordability demands cost discipline that pushes in the opposite direction of freshness and nutrition. The vision statement’s attempt to claim all three creates internal tension that, in practice, has historically been resolved by sacrificing one or more of these pillars. The most common casualty has been genuine freshness, as the operational demands of a global franchise system make truly fresh ingredient sourcing logistically challenging and economically impractical at the price points Subway targets.

There is no mention of digital transformation or modern consumer behavior. By 2026, mobile ordering, delivery partnerships, loyalty programs, and digital-first customer engagement have become table stakes in the QSR industry. Subway has invested in these areas, launching its refreshed Subway app and expanding delivery partnerships, but the vision statement reflects none of this. A vision statement written for the next decade of competition should acknowledge that being the “number one QSR brand” requires winning in digital channels, not just physical locations. The omission makes the vision feel dated, as though it was drafted before the pandemic permanently altered how consumers interact with fast-food brands.

The Roark Capital Acquisition and Its Strategic Implications

In August 2023, Roark Capital Group completed its acquisition of Subway for approximately $9.55 billion, marking the end of nearly six decades of ownership by the DeLuca family and co-founder Peter Buck’s estate. Roark, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, was no stranger to the restaurant franchise world. Its portfolio already included Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John’s, and Dunkin‘ Donuts through its various holdings, making the Subway acquisition a consolidation move of remarkable scale. For context, Roark’s restaurant portfolio, when combined with Subway, represents one of the largest collections of restaurant brands under a single ownership umbrella in the world, a fact that carries implications worth examining alongside Arby’s own mission and vision statements.

The acquisition was driven by a thesis that Subway’s brand remained fundamentally powerful but had been undermined by years of underinvestment, inconsistent franchise oversight, and a failure to modernize. Under the DeLuca family’s later stewardship, particularly after Fred DeLuca’s death in 2015, the company had struggled to articulate a clear strategic direction. Store counts declined from a peak of approximately 44,800 locations worldwide to roughly 37,000 by the time of the sale. Same-store sales growth was inconsistent, and franchisee satisfaction scores lagged behind competitors.

Roark’s playbook, refined through its management of Arby’s “We Have The Meats” turnaround and the revitalization of Dunkin’, centers on operational discipline, brand reinvestment, and strategic pruning of underperforming locations. Applied to Subway, this has meant several concrete changes in the years since the acquisition. Corporate leadership was restructured, with new executives brought in from both Roark portfolio companies and external hires with QSR turnaround experience. Marketing budgets were increased, with campaigns emphasizing ingredient quality and menu innovation rather than price promotions alone. And the franchise agreement structure began undergoing revision, a process that has generated both optimism and anxiety among the franchisee base.

The critical question for Subway’s mission and vision is whether Roark’s ownership will redefine what “number one” means. Under the DeLuca family, being number one meant having the most locations. Under Roark, the definition appears to be shifting toward revenue per unit, brand equity, and system-wide profitability. This is a fundamentally different strategic orientation, and it is one that the current mission and vision statements do not yet fully reflect. A company that is deliberately closing underperforming locations to strengthen its overall system is not pursuing “number one” by the old definition. The vision statement, as written, has not caught up with the strategic reality that Roark’s ownership has imposed.

Franchise Model Overhaul: Rewriting the Operator Relationship

Subway’s franchise model has long been one of the most accessible in the restaurant industry. Low initial investment requirements, relatively modest royalty fees, and a simple operational model made Subway franchises attainable for first-time business owners in a way that a McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A franchise never could be. This accessibility was central to the brand’s explosive growth through the 1990s and 2000s. It was also, arguably, the root cause of many of its subsequent problems.

Low barriers to entry attracted operators who were undercapitalized, inexperienced, or both. The proliferation of locations, often in close proximity to one another, cannibalized same-store sales and created an environment where franchisees competed as much with each other as with external competitors. Quality control suffered because the sheer number of locations made consistent oversight impossible. The result was a system where the average Subway franchise generated significantly lower revenue than the average franchise of most major QSR competitors, even though the total number of Subway locations dwarfed those competitors.

Under Roark’s direction, the franchise model has been undergoing a systematic overhaul. New franchise agreements include higher financial qualification thresholds, mandatory store remodel commitments, and revised royalty structures that shift more revenue toward corporate in exchange for greater marketing and operational support. Multi-unit operators, those who own several locations and can achieve economies of scale, are being prioritized over single-unit owners. Underperforming locations are being closed or consolidated rather than propped up with discounting.

This transformation is directly relevant to the mission statement. If the mission is to “delight every customer,” then the quality of the franchise operator is the single most important variable in achieving that goal. A franchisee who is well-capitalized, well-trained, and operating a recently remodeled store will deliver a fundamentally different customer experience than one who is struggling financially in a dated location. The franchise model overhaul is, in effect, the operational strategy for fulfilling the mission, yet the mission statement itself makes no reference to franchise excellence, operator standards, or system quality. This disconnect between strategic action and stated purpose is a missed opportunity for alignment.

Menu Refresh Strategy: Beyond the $5 Footlong

Subway’s menu strategy has undergone more visible change in the past three years than in the preceding two decades combined. The “Eat Fresh Refresh” campaign, launched in 2021, represented the most comprehensive menu overhaul in the company’s history, introducing new breads, proteins, and signature sandwich recipes. This initiative continued through the Roark acquisition and has evolved into an ongoing cycle of menu innovation that treats the sandwich lineup as a dynamic portfolio rather than a static offering.

The strategic logic is straightforward. For years, Subway’s menu had become stale in both perception and reality. While competitors like Jersey Mike’s built reputations around high-quality deli slicing and premium ingredients, and Firehouse Subs differentiated through hearty, specialty recipes, Subway relied on the same core sandwich formulations that had been in place since the 1990s. The “wide variety of choices” referenced in the mission statement had become a liability rather than an asset: customers had many options, but few of them felt exciting or distinctive.

The refresh strategy has addressed this in several ways. Subway introduced its Subway Series, a collection of signature sandwiches designed by the company rather than assembled by the customer. This was a meaningful departure from the build-your-own model that had defined Subway for decades. By offering curated, pre-designed sandwiches with specific ingredient combinations, Subway was tacitly acknowledging that unlimited customization, while appealing in theory, often resulted in mediocre sandwiches because most customers lack the culinary knowledge to assemble optimal flavor combinations. The Subway Series sandwiches gave customers permission to order a sandwich that the company had specifically engineered to taste good.

Ingredient quality upgrades have accompanied the new menu architecture. Sliced deli meats replaced some of the reformed, pre-portioned protein options that had drawn consumer criticism. New cheese varieties were introduced. Bread recipes were reformulated. These changes are expensive at system scale, and they create tension with the “outstanding value” and “affordability” pillars of the mission and vision statements. Premium ingredients have higher food costs, which must be absorbed by franchisees, passed to consumers through higher prices, or offset by increased volume. The menu refresh strategy is, at its core, a bet that Subway can move upmarket in quality without losing its price-sensitive customer base, a bet that the mission and vision statements frame as a certainty but that the market has not yet fully validated.

The Competitive Landscape: Jimmy John’s, Jersey Mike’s, and the Sandwich Wars

Subway’s competitive position in 2026 cannot be understood without examining the two brands that have most aggressively challenged its dominance in the sandwich segment: Jimmy John’s and Jersey Mike’s. Each represents a different competitive threat, and together they illustrate the strategic pressures that Subway’s mission and vision must address.

Jimmy John’s, which is itself a Roark Capital portfolio company, competes primarily on speed and simplicity. Its “Freaky Fast” delivery promise and streamlined menu are the antithesis of Subway’s customization-heavy approach. Jimmy John’s does not offer toasted sandwiches. It does not invite customers to choose from a dozen vegetables and six sauces. It makes a limited number of sandwiches quickly and delivers them even faster. This operational simplicity translates into consistent quality and lower labor costs per transaction, advantages that are difficult for Subway’s more complex model to match. The fact that Roark now owns both brands creates an unusual dynamic: the parent company must manage two brands that directly compete for the same customer occasions, a tension that private equity firms typically resolve through market segmentation but that remains visible to consumers and franchisees alike.

Jersey Mike’s represents a different kind of threat. Founded in 1956 but aggressively expanded over the past decade, Jersey Mike’s has positioned itself as the premium alternative in the sub sandwich category. Its stores slice meats and cheeses to order in front of the customer, a theatrical element that reinforces freshness claims in a way that Subway’s pre-sliced ingredients cannot. Jersey Mike’s average unit volumes are reportedly significantly higher than Subway’s, despite having a smaller footprint. The brand’s growth trajectory has been steep, expanding from roughly 2,000 locations in 2020 to well over 3,000 by 2026, with aggressive franchise expansion continuing.

Jersey Mike’s success exposes a vulnerability in Subway’s vision statement. If Subway aspires to be the “number one QSR brand” while “maintaining freshness,” it must contend with a competitor that demonstrably delivers a fresher product experience. Jersey Mike’s does not merely claim freshness; it performs freshness in front of the customer with every order. Subway’s “Eat Fresh” messaging rings hollow by comparison when the customer can see that ingredients were pre-portioned before they arrived at the store. The vision statement’s freshness aspiration collides with the operational reality of a system designed for efficiency and consistency rather than artisanal preparation.

Beyond the sandwich segment, Subway continues to compete with the broader QSR universe for share of stomach. Chipotle has demonstrated that customers will pay premium prices for customizable meals made with higher-quality ingredients. Chick-fil-A has shown that operational excellence and brand loyalty can generate extraordinary revenue per location. Even McDonald’s, through its ongoing value menu battles and digital loyalty program, competes for the same lunch and dinner occasions that Subway targets. The vision statement’s ambition to be the “number one QSR brand in the world” means competing and winning against all of these operators simultaneously, a challenge that the company’s current trajectory makes aspirational rather than imminent.

Store Count Decline: Strategic Pruning or Structural Retreat?

No analysis of Subway’s mission and vision would be complete without addressing the store count decline that has defined the brand’s narrative for nearly a decade. From a peak of approximately 44,800 locations worldwide in 2015, Subway’s footprint has contracted significantly. By the time Roark Capital completed its acquisition, the count had fallen to approximately 37,000. Through 2024, 2025, and into 2026, closures have continued, though at a moderated pace, as the company has shifted from reactive closures of failing locations to proactive consolidation of its network.

There are two ways to interpret this contraction, and the distinction matters for evaluating the mission and vision statements. The pessimistic interpretation is that Subway is in structural decline, losing customers and franchisees to superior competitors, and that the store closures represent a brand that has passed its peak relevance. Under this reading, the vision statement’s ambition to be “number one” is disconnected from reality, a corporate aspiration that serves internal morale but has no grounding in market trajectory.

The more charitable, and arguably more accurate, interpretation is that the store count decline is a necessary correction to decades of over-expansion. Subway’s growth strategy under the DeLuca family prioritized unit count above all else, leading to market saturation, franchisee cannibalization, and a degradation of the average customer experience. Closing underperforming locations raises the average revenue and profitability of remaining stores, improves the customer experience by eliminating the worst-performing outlets, and creates a healthier franchise system overall. Under this reading, the store count decline is not a retreat but a strategic repositioning, one that trades scale for quality.

Roark Capital’s track record supports the second interpretation. The firm’s management of Arby’s involved a similar period of store count reduction followed by brand reinvestment and revenue growth. The playbook is to shrink the system to its strongest core, invest in brand and product, and then grow again from a position of strength. If Subway follows this trajectory, the current store count decline is a transitional phase rather than a terminal one.

However, the mission and vision statements do not acknowledge this transition. A vision statement that aspires to be “number one” while the company is actively shrinking its footprint creates cognitive dissonance for franchisees and employees who see stores closing around them. A more transparent vision statement might acknowledge the current phase explicitly, framing the contraction as a deliberate step toward building a stronger, more profitable system. Instead, the current vision statement reads as though the company is already on an upward trajectory, which undermines credibility with stakeholders who can see the data.

The Freshness Paradox: Brand Promise Versus Operational Reality

The tension between Subway’s freshness branding and its operational model deserves dedicated examination because it sits at the intersection of the mission and vision statements. “Eat Fresh” has been Subway’s tagline for over two decades. The vision statement explicitly references “freshness” as a value to maintain. Yet the operational reality of a global franchise system with 37,000-plus locations makes genuine freshness, in the way that a consumer might define it, extremely difficult to deliver consistently.

Freshness, in the consumer imagination, means ingredients that were recently prepared, minimally processed, and sourced with attention to quality. It evokes images of bread baked that morning, vegetables sliced that day, and meats carved from whole cuts. Subway delivers some of these elements. Bread is baked in-store, and vegetables are available in their recognizable whole forms (sliced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, whole olive slices). But many proteins arrive at stores pre-cooked and pre-portioned. Sauces are manufactured centrally and shipped in bulk. The “freshness” experience is, in many respects, a carefully constructed performance rather than a fundamental operational characteristic.

This is not a criticism unique to Subway. Every large-scale restaurant chain makes compromises between freshness and the demands of consistency, food safety, and cost control. But Subway is the chain that has most aggressively staked its brand identity on freshness, which means it faces a higher standard of scrutiny. When the vision statement commits to “maintaining freshness,” it raises the question: maintaining what level of freshness? The answer, as delivered through tens of thousands of franchise locations with varying degrees of operational rigor, is inevitably inconsistent. And inconsistency is the enemy of a brand promise.

The menu refresh strategy has attempted to narrow this gap. The introduction of sliced deli meats, the reformulation of bread recipes, and the emphasis on ingredient sourcing standards are all steps toward making the freshness promise more credible. But as long as the gap between consumer expectation and operational delivery persists, the vision statement’s freshness language will remain more aspirational than descriptive, a goal to work toward rather than a reality to celebrate.

What the Statements Reveal About Corporate Identity

Taken together, Subway’s mission and vision statements paint a portrait of a company that knows what made it successful (customization, value, accessibility) but has not fully reconciled that legacy with its current challenges (quality perception, franchise tension, competitive pressure). The mission statement is operational and customer-focused, emphasizing the immediate experience of eating at Subway. The vision statement is aspirational and competitive, projecting an image of global dominance. Neither statement addresses the structural and strategic changes that Roark Capital’s ownership has set in motion.

This is not unusual for companies in transition. Mission and vision statements tend to lag behind strategic reality because they are designed to be stable, enduring declarations rather than responsive documents. A company undergoing a private equity-led turnaround does not typically rewrite its mission statement every quarter. But the gap between Subway’s stated purpose and its actual strategic direction is wide enough to warrant attention.

The mission statement’s silence on franchisee relations, digital transformation, and ingredient quality makes it feel incomplete. The vision statement’s undefined “number one” ambition and its attempt to claim freshness, nutrition, and affordability simultaneously make it feel overextended. Together, they describe a company that has not yet decided what it wants to be in its next chapter, or at least has not yet articulated that decision in its guiding statements. Among leading companies with well-crafted mission and vision statements, the most effective examples demonstrate a clear, unified strategic narrative, something that Subway’s current statements do not yet achieve.

Final Assessment

Subway’s mission and vision statements are serviceable but unremarkable. They communicate basic strategic priorities without providing the kind of clarity, specificity, or inspiration that the best corporate statements deliver. The mission statement’s word-of-mouth framing is its most distinctive element, and the three-pillar structure (taste, variety, value) provides useful operational guidance. But the absence of freshness language, franchisee acknowledgment, and digital awareness leaves it feeling incomplete for a company operating in 2026.

The vision statement’s ambition to be the world’s number one QSR brand is bold but underdefined. Without specifying what “number one” means, the statement invites skepticism rather than conviction. The inclusion of freshness and nutritional value in the vision but not the mission creates an awkward strategic asymmetry, implying that these qualities are aspirational goals rather than current realities. And the attempt to simultaneously claim freshness, nutrition, and affordability sets up an internal tension that the company’s operations have historically struggled to resolve.

What both statements lack most is an acknowledgment of the company’s current transitional state. Subway under Roark Capital is not the same company it was under the DeLuca family. The strategic priorities have shifted from unit growth to unit economics, from market saturation to market optimization, from price-driven competition to quality-driven differentiation. These are fundamental changes in corporate direction, and they deserve mission and vision statements that reflect them.

A revised mission statement might explicitly reference franchise excellence, ingredient integrity, and the digital customer experience. A revised vision statement might define “number one” in terms of customer satisfaction, revenue per unit, or brand trust rather than leaving the metric ambiguous. Both could benefit from acknowledging the competitive reality that Subway faces, not with defensiveness, but with the kind of clear-eyed strategic confidence that the best corporate statements project.

Until that revision occurs, Subway’s mission and vision statements will continue to describe a company that no longer quite exists, a company defined by relentless expansion and unqualified freshness claims, rather than the leaner, more strategically focused organization that Roark Capital is working to build. The statements are not wrong, but they are incomplete. And in a competitive environment where Jersey Mike’s is growing, Jimmy John’s is innovating, and the broader QSR landscape is evolving at speed, incomplete strategic communication is a luxury that Subway cannot afford.