Subway's 7 Biggest Failures Of All Time

We won't beat around the bush: Subway is having a rough time. In 2025 alone, it closed nearly 730 stores. The sandwich chain, founded in the 1960s, has been in decline for a while now. In 2021, it closed more than 1,000 locations.

Subway isn't alone in its struggles. The restaurant industry in general has been floundering since COVID-19 due to rising rents, food supply costs, and slowing consumer demand amid a biting and unrelenting cost-of-living crisis. But that said, some of the sandwich chain's problems have arguably been rumbling for quite a while now — even before the pandemic.

Here, we take a look back at some of the biggest failures the chain has experienced over the last few decades. From trusting the wrong people to be the face of the brand, to failing to listen to franchisees, to a lack of transparency, the sandwich chain has weathered more than a few storms over the years.

Jared Fogle started out as the perfect spokesperson for Subway. He was just a regular guy who wanted to lose a few (okay, a lot of) pounds. He starred in dozens of commercials highlighting the role that Subway's sandwiches had played in his weight loss journey, and, for a decade and a half, Fogle and his 200-pound weight loss were central to Subway's advertising. As one Reddit user puts it in the r/AskAnAmerican subreddit, "No one ever talked about him outside of actively watching a [Subway] commercial."

That changed when, in one of the biggest fast food scandals ever, Fogle was arrested for child abuse imagery in 2015. He was sent to prison, and Subway's reputation was damaged. The chain's seemingly weak reaction to the news didn't help rebuild it. After Fogle pleaded guilty, Subway simply announced on social media that it no longer had a relationship with the former spokesperson and wouldn't be commenting further. That's it. Well, at least until a few months later, when it was revealed that an internal investigation had thrown up a serious complaint made against Fogle in 2011.

Many still feel that Subway didn't do enough. In fact, some believe that the chain's higher-ups knew for months prior and didn't do anything about it. We don't know if that's true, but we do know that Fogle's arrest will likely be an ugly stain on the chain's reputation forever.

When you think of the ultimate fast food breakfast, one chain probably comes to mind. And it's likely not Subway. McDonald's wasn't the first fast food chain to introduce a breakfast menu (that was probably Jack in the Box, but it is, arguably, one of the most beloved in the business. The Egg McMuffin? Legendary.

Subway wanted a piece of the breakfast market, so in 2010, it started requiring all franchises to open at 7 a.m. and serve diners omelet sandwiches. But McMuffins they were not. While some loved Subway's breakfast options, most just weren't that interested. In 2018, one poll by market research firm Field Agent found that more than 40% of Subway's customers didn't eat breakfast at the chain. Even worse? Around a fifth of customers didn't even know that Subway offered a breakfast menu.

Subway took the hint. In 2018, eight years after launching the menu, Subway told its franchises that they could stop offering the breakfast menu if it wasn't performing. Some chose to keep it on, and in 2026, breakfast is still available in select locations, but it's not the juggernaut that Subway hoped it would be. To add insult to injury, many people say that Subway just isn't really that good at making breakfast sandwiches. "Tried [a Subway breakfast sandwich] again recently and it didn't have much flavor," wrote one person in the r/subway subreddit. "Subway in a nutshell, I guess."

Name something better than free food. Look, you can probably come up with something, but we'll bet you had to rack your brains for a second, right? Free food is one of those things that is guaranteed to put a pep in most people's step. But when Subway tried to give away free sandwiches in 2021, it seemed to be met with quite a puzzling reaction: No one showed up. Okay, some people showed up, but for some employees, the reaction to free food was seriously underwhelming. Let's rewind.

In July 2021, Subway announced a menu overhaul called Eat Fresh Refresh. It had upgraded its recipes, introduced new bread options, and made digital improvements to its website and app, too. In celebration, it announced that, from 10 a.m. until noon on July 13, workers could give out free Turkey Cali Fresh subs to anyone who asked, totaling one million free subs across the country.

But while Subway insisted that the giveaway performed well, many workers and customers had different experiences. "We've made [three] sandwiches all day, in a usually very busy store," wrote one Subway employee on the r/subway subreddit. Some speculated that it wasn't that customers didn't want the free food, but that Subway hadn't done a very good job on marketing the promotion. "Only did [four] of the promo subs today at our local store," wrote another employee. "Less than 50 for all the local Subways together."

In January 2021, two customers in California filed a lawsuit against Subway alleging that its tuna wasn't really tuna. The customers claimed that, instead, the sandwich chain was serving customers a blend of ingredients that simply looked like tuna. Subway, of course, vehemently denied this claim. But things went from bad to worse when testing by The New York Times also found no evidence of tuna in its tuna sandwiches. The lab that carried out the testing hypothesized that this could be because the fish was heavily processed, rather than it not actually being tuna.

The lesson, perhaps, was to be clearer about its ingredients. Some felt that Subway should never have claimed to offer 100% tuna in the first place, given the wider problems in the seafood industry. In 2022, for example, nonprofit Oceana found that 59% of all tuna in the restaurant industry is mislabeled. Fortunately for Subway, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2023.

But the tuna scandal is just one example of Subway being taken to task over its ingredients. In 2013, it was sued for allegedly selling 11-inch sandwiches as footlongs, and in 2024, it was sued again for not filling its sandwiches with as much meat as advertised.

Unlike the one million sandwich giveaway, customers really did love Subway's $5 Footlong sandwich deal. After a successful stint in some Florida franchises, the deal was first offered on a nationwide basis in March 2008, just before the recession set in. It was good timing: People wanted fast food for cheaper prices, and Subway was ready and waiting. 

To be clear: The initial $5 Footlong sandwich deal was not a failure. No, the failure came years later, when Subway tried the same tactic again, in a different economy, with very different results. In 2017, the $5 Footlong sandwich deal returned, but franchisees were furious. Everything had gone up since 2008, including labor costs, rent, and food prices, and the deal couldn't turn a meaningful profit anymore. They felt trapped and let down by the company, but Subway didn't learn. It tried again with the $5 Footlongs in 2020, and franchisees filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission.

So really, there are three failures here: Not reading the room (that's a big one, it failed to see that 2017's world couldn't deliver the same results as 2008); not listening to franchisees; and not learning from prior mistakes. And as an added bonus failure, the way Subway treated its franchisees over the $5 Footlong deal turned off some customers for good. "I no longer support their business," wrote one person in the r/forgottenfoods subreddit. "Just feel bad for the hard-working franchisees who got burnt."

Subway isn't afraid to give away free food. In the 1980s, for example, it started up its Sub Club promotion. The idea was pretty simple: Customers grabbed a card from their local store and collected a stamp on it every time they ordered. After collecting eight stamps, they would get a free sandwich.

But it turns out Sub Club was pretty easy to infiltrate. In the early 2000s, people started selling counterfeit stamps online to people eager to get their free sandwich without the preliminary eight visits. The key problem was that the fake stamps were convincing, and they were slipping through undetected with ease. Subway was doing what it loves to do: giving away free sandwiches. Only this time, it wasn't on its own terms. In the end, Subway grew tired of the fraudsters and retired the Sub Club. 

In 2025, though, Subway decided to give it another shot. Sub Club returned, but this time, it was primarily app-based, making it a little more fraud-proof. However, the new iteration of Sub Club has still managed to disappoint people. In April 2026, Subway stopped offering free subs through the promotion and turned Sub Club into a points-based system only. Many were disappointed, but not surprised. "When they first introduced the Sub Club, I thought it seemed too good to last," wrote one Redditor. They added: "The main reason for me to get Subway was a cheap lunch [one to two times] a week, and that's completely gone."

In 2014, Subway seemed to go through a slight identity crisis. The sandwich chain decided it was time to start offering something new, so it launched the Flatizza. The simple pizza flatbread, which could be customized just like a classic sub, got off to a tricky start. For one, customers didn't know how to pronounce the name (which is like "fla-tee-zah," for the record), and some even found it embarrassing to say out loud.

Some liked the Flatizza, but ultimately it, ahem, fell flat. People felt that Subway should just stay in its lane and stick to sandwiches instead of trying to compete with pizza chains. "How did this abomination ever get the green light?" questioned one Reddit user. They added: "A sandwich shop should focus on, oh I don't know, maybe making sandwiches instead of some ersatz "pizza" looking thing?"

You'll probably be unsurprised to learn that the Flatizza didn't last, and was discontinued just one year after it was rolled out. That said, if you were one of the few Flatizza fans, some franchises chose to keep offering them, so you might be in luck.