This is probably a good thing. I packed on a ton of weight when I was in college because fast food was really cheap. Things like dollar menu sandwiches, 5 for $5 at Arbys, $0.29 hamburgers on Sundays at McD, etc. I remember strategically buying bags full of fast food and putting them in the freezer because I couldn’t make food that cheap. Reheated from the freezer tasted HORRIBLE, but it was cheap and I was broke. At these prices I would have made better decisions for my health.
Nobody’s making you overeat garbage food no matter what it costs lol. If it was free would you be 900 pounds? Come on man.
Three hundred percent inflation isn’t a good thing ever.
If I want to spend that much on a sandwich I’ll go to Jersey Mike’s.
Jersey Mike’s was recently purchased by the same company that owns Subway. Give it time and they’ll be the same shit quality.
It was Subway that was recently purchased by the investment firm that owns Jimmy Johns. Jersey Mike’s didn’t sell.
Oh Jimmy John’s already sucks, I’m fine then.
And then they’ll raise the prices even higher.
That’s unfortunate.
Love me my Ike’s
I’d rather got to Penn Station, but Jersey Mike’s is still pretty good.
Lee’s or a Primos for me.
But Jersey mikes is not bad if it’s all there is.
And get a much better sandwich too.
That’s kind of implied
To be fair Jersey Mike’s footlongs have gone from $14 to $24.
Why are fast food places charging premium prices for slowed down food with cheaper ingredients? If I’m gonna spend over $10 or over 10 minutes at a place you bet your ass it isn’t gonna be a fast food joint. It’s gonna be a place with real ingredients and an atmosphere that isn’t overflowing toilets.
Is that a nationwide thing? It feels weird over here, but yeah, it seems like a lot of the midrange/sit down restaurant small chains just never changed their prices.
The smaller restaurants kept their prices tracking actual inflation to maintain their customer base. Lately they have been enjoying increased business because of the nationals screwups.
The local Greek place $65.
The best taco truck in town is $55.
For $75 I can get my local family owned Thai place with leftovers for the next day.
DQ, McD, Subway, KFC, all run between $60-75.
For $70 I can even get my family chipotle and enjoy the guaranteed food poisoning a few hours later.
Or at the very least it’s going to be an upscale fast food place. Church’s Chicken, not KFC
While I like Church’s Chicken better than KFC I definitely wouldn’t call them more upscale. In fact I’ve never seen a Church’s that wasn’t in the hood.
Yeah, I read that and thought “If this person thinks Church’s is ‘upscale fast food’, where do they normally go, soup kitchens?”
McDicks, so even lower than soup kitchens :P
But I have been informed that my local Church’s is unusually nice, they aren’t all like that
Heh. The only Church’s I know is pretty fancy; must depend on the area
I’m not gonna look it up, but who recently bought Subway and is now cashing in on tanking it so they can sell the corpse?
If you ever watch CompanyMan on youtube, it’s like 90% of all “The Fall of [Company]” involves either going public and then rapidly expanding, or “acquired by private equity firm then died in 5 years”
Its like the saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
By far the worst one is always the private equity/leveraged buyout. It always ends in failure for the company.
It’s supposed to end in failure due to having all the money squeezed and sucked out of the company.
What happens to the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to the people making the buyout decision. If they can pad their wallets then who cares about what happens to the company?
That’s the same price as a succulent Chinese meal.
I have no clue how they don’t get it. The selling point of fast food was always the speed, convenience and a price. They’ve been degrading all 3 of those selling points and now it’s just not fucking worth it anymore.
But like it’s nothing new, I don’t belive I’m the only one, that for the last few years, every price hike just started picking less and less form the menu. And I’m not poor, far from it, I can definitely afford the price hikes, it’s just, once it’s 8x times more expensive than home cooking, the convenience no longer outweighs the shit ass quality. I hate paying as if I was at a fancy place and getting pure shit, might as well just go to a fancy place for fucks sake!
They almost doubled the price of their stuff. No fucking way I am paying that. I’ll pack my own sandwiches…
“Why are our sales plummeting?”
Because you didn’t spend any part of that price hike on improving the quality of your food.
Subway… Selling sandwiches that don’t contain actual bread,. Does not contain actual cheese. And does not contain actual meat. But DOES contain more odd chemicals than DOW Chemacals makes
That and the ingredients are awful! Why would anyone go to subway when you could go to Jersey Mike’s or the numerous other sandwich shops.
Idk. Maybe paying people 14 bucks a hour just to make sandwiches cause they complain that they can’t make money. Because they have no skills. Because they would rather make sandwiches and complain than get a job that pays better.
Why is it that fast food thinks it can charge for sit-down restaurant prices nowadays?
Greed is, by definition, when self interest becomes irrational.
That is not the definition of greed, what are you taking about? I agree that irrational greed is driving it though
It’s not greed, it’s just ““international factors”” that are causing them to put prices up. Russia invaded Ukraine so they have to charge extra for a sandwich of course!
Exactly, the Ukrainian seasoning costs way too much to import nowadays
Okay perhaps you’re joking, but this is something that people across the world are not aware of or don’t want to acknowledge. Ukraine is a major agricultural exporter, and a lot of their produce go to farmers across the world. The supply of many Ukrainian produce, especially grain, had been restricted which increased global food price and has not gone down to pre-war level. Fewer supply but more demand leads to higher price. Including in the link I gave, it mentioned that if the war is sustained for long, it could further worsen food crisis in many developing countries. There is a reason why Africa sent delegates to try to mediate on the conflict. But they won’t tell you that it is because they rely on stable global food price to feed their people, and much of chicken feeds used by African farmers are imported from Ukraine! People don’t see the full picture at how integrally interconnected we all are.
When a country sneeze, we all catch cold.
Trying to spin this into Africa doesn’t care about Ukraine except for the uptick in the cost of food price is crazy
i imagine if your country and the western world wanted to end the war, it could but they have no interest due to how profitable war is, so here we are
Well lookie here, a lemmy.ml account trying to spin a faux concern.
The only way for the war in Ukraine to end is if Russia pulls out from a conflict they started unprovoked, and which the UN General Assembly have overwhelmingly declared illegal. Will you advocate then for Russia to pull out?
While that’s definitely a factor in global food trends, I don’t see that impacting the US price of food as drastically as companies thinking they can get away with raising prices.
My reasoning is the web of tarrifs and subsidies that the US uses to stabilize domestic markets, prop up farmers, and generally ensure the US is the key grain player. Shortly after the war started the US and Canada also saw a better than average harvest of the grains that Ukraine typically exports.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU02120301 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU3112113112111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL
The domestic prices paid for wheat and flour both started to fall shortly after the Ukraine invasion, while food prices maintained a rocketing trajectory without much if any changes, with only a slight decrease in the rate of increase about a year after.
While protectionist US food policies are chock full of horrible problems, in this case they should have insulated people from radical changes in the availability and price of wheat.
That consumer prices have risen despite falling costs paid to producers is a big indicator that the cost increases are due to something else in the US.None of this applies to countries that are dependent on grain imports who have to rely on the global markets instead of adjusting export profitability to stabilize things.
Bread costs are a tiny % of prepared food. You are mostly paying for rent and labor of the employees.
Who, thanks to COVID, realized they were all getting fucked and did a silent rebellion and now make about half of what a professional office worker makes. Those dastardly socialists! 😠😠😠
While that all sounds sane and rational, it’s a sad fact the price trend does not appear to go both ways. Do you believe that food prices will go back down after supply goes up?
The rational part of me thinks “yes, of course”. The cynical part of me thinks, “no, of course not, aritificially limiting supplies would be too profitable.”
its like selling us renewable energy technology via the argument: “why not use the energy of the sun and the wind, its free!” yet energy gets more and more expensive. inflation is a great tool to extract more and more money out of you. its very subtle and slow. but its a scaling effect that really pays out for someone on the receiving end.
Macroeconomics 101 would tell you no, prices won’t go down because prices are sticky. Like your salary for example, just because a business is doing poorly your wage won’t go down.
I won’t get into the weeds about it, but if Ukraine was magically restored tomorrow, prices wouldn’t go down but it would help prices from going up faster.
If we see prices go down that’s a bad thing, and we are in for a rough time.
What’s crazy is that it’s still one of the cheapest fast food options
IMO, no sandwich on Earth is worth $14. Especially not one from SooubWay.
If I could have the best burger I’ve ever had right in front of me right now, I’d pay ~$25 for it. The cost we pay for top-notch sandwiches is typically a search cost.
I had an amazing buffalo chicken sub from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in NYC that cost $16, and it was worth every penny. It was like 2 pounds of food, and they cut the chicken and grilled it right there in front of me. But that place and Subway aren’t even on the same planet as quality goes.
I’m willing to pay a decent amount for Schlotzkys tbh. But they’d have to exist in my area first.
I can either: A. Drive to fuckin’ Toledo Or B. Drive to Kentucky.
Oh man, you’ve never had a good Rueben then. Good corned beef, a pile of kraut, swiss, fresh rye bread (or sourdough), and that thousand island and/or spicy mustard. Grilled up and served with a pickle spear and some fresh chips.
Making one is not cheap, though not a lot more than your typical burger. But, a 14 usd price is reasonable when you factor in labor. I’ve paid more than that for a truly great Rueben where the corned beef was made in house, and the bread came from an attached bakery. Completely, totally worth twenty bucks.
Our closest deli that’s like the kind of deli in bigger cities charges 15 and some change for their Rueben that comes with a pickle, potato chips, and a drink. I ain’t mad at that price even though it makes it a rare treat.
Which, I get you, you led off with IMO which means you’re speaking only for yourself, so I’m not saying your opinion is wrong, or trying to change your opinion! Just giving my opinion on the matter of expensive sandwiches for my own tastes.
A footlong NY Italian at my local sub shop with like 4 kinds of meat and a ton of veggies on it costs $9. It’s better than subway in literally every way. The people who work there are chill and seem to like it too
I disagree, there’s a sub place near me with a 16" sandwich with like 5 meats, 3 cheeses, and lots of toppings that costs about $14. The heft is noticable, even when I’m hungry I can only eat about half.
There are some high quality places out there, Subway has always been the McDs of subs. I feel they started to go downhill when they stopped cutting the v notch in the bread to stuff it full and just went with boring halves.
I will say to those thinking $5 should remain the price - we were okay with $5 subs a decade or more ago, but now asking more is too much? Inflation is a thing. $5 purchasing power in 1990 is now $12 in 2024. The argument shouldn’t be about the price increase, as it should have crept up this whole time. But the quality should have at least remained the same, and the workers fairly paid. The price of the sub is the least of the problems.
But the price increase kinda is a symptom of the underlying issue. For reference, the reason that subway subs were $5 for a long time was that the company was trying an advertising campaign to grow the brand, which it did amazingly well (honestly, far too well). However, those were not sold at a sustainable price, but whenever the company tried to raise the price it was perceived very poorly by the market. So they kept the price low for a long time, and eventually had to raise it but due to inflation (and decreasing the sub size to compensate for the low price before that), but the price increase was pretty drastic to most of the customers who often stopped going there.
In other words, the company kept the price down artificially to keep their stock price high, and foisted a lot of the actual costs onto the franchisees, of which they had tons. Which is obviously not a sustainable business model, and it’s why less people go to subway anymore.
They also allowed overcrowding. You could basically put a Subway right next to another Subway if you wanted. 3-4 in a single neighborhood. Corporate does not care if the franchisees make any money.
they brought the quality down to match the 5$… did they bring it back up to be worth 14?! i kinda doubt it
Not only that, they lowered the quality at the same time. I remember when a subway sandwich was still kinda gross, but at least it was filling and you could have a decently healthy calorie dollar if you ordered right. Now, half the weight of your sandwich is in that super sweetened bread and the meat portions are tiny
I’ve been to Subway twice in the last twenty years. Both times the shop was understaffed and it took more than half an hour to get our meals, and they weren’t even good compared to other sub chains that cost less, let alone the local non-franchise sub shops.
The last attempt was a few years before COVID. I can’t imagine how bad it is now.
My wife and I walked into a Subway recently to use the restrooms. Not an employee in sight. Did our business and walked out without seeing a single person. I would have thought they were closed had the lights not been on and the door unlocked. Don’t know how they stay in business.
Last time ive seen a subway sandwich that wasn’t gross looking was in the 90s
I ordered a flatbread sandwich recently and the bread was extremely crusty and smelled old and bald. Subway is 100% in the gutter right now
super sweetened bread
Fun fact: it’s so sweetened that the Supreme Court of Ireland (SCOI is a fun acronym) reclassified it as cake.
Also, Subway chicken is only 50% chicken.
To find out what the other 50% is, listen to the latest episode of my podcast Subway Exposure!
Just kidding, I don’t have a podcast. It’s soybeans.
I really don’t like subway, but they do have new chicken. Their old stuff was clearly not chicken. Their new stuff actually looks like chicken so I’m pretty sure the figure you are quoting is their old shit chicken
All of the above is concerning.
They rolled that, for tax purposes, it counts as a confectionary because of the high sugar content. They did not file that it is literally cake.
But what is cake if not bread plus sugar? 🤔
To me, it’s mainly gluten content. Cake is fluffy while bread is more chewy. You can have sweet breads and savoury breads. I imagine you can have savoury cakes too, but I’ve never had so I don’t know how good that would be.
It’s soybeans.
If that’s true I really wish they’d just start offering a tofu option at Subway so I don’t just have to get vegetables in bread lol
Was it Taco Bell people were complaining that the meat filling isn’t ground all ground beef? I was like sweet I’d rather it be seasoned veggie delight anyway. Meat quality is not the draw of Taco Bell.
Yea. Taco Bell Seasoned meat has been a seasoned freeze-dried tofu and beef blend for decades now.
Taco Bell claims 88% beef with water and seasoning composing the rest.
They used to have a veggie patty. It was so bad, I regretted not just getting vegetables in bread.
Lol. Yeah some veggie patties can be horrendous. Like some of the ones from Aldi.
Subway Exposure
I’m hoping that’s a different entity than the Subway Exposer
the tuna was also found to not be tuna.
That was just a rumor. Not that it isnt disgusting. I used to like it until i got a double meat version ans wondered wtf this pasty garbage was in my mouth. Disgusting!
I used to get a roasted chicken breast sub from Subway every day. The chicken slab was pre-cooked and literally sitting in a bucket of warm water, from which they would pull it and microwave it for a few seconds. How in the living fuck did I ever think it was OK for chicken to be sitting in a bucket of warm water all day?
This was around the time they stopped baking their own rolls in-store every day, and somehow I was also OK with the stale rolls that replaced it. I guess I was distracted by their pedophile spokesman.
