Sorry, Jersey Mike's — This Chain Still Sells More Sandwiches

Every decade has its chain restaurant success stories, and it certainly feels like the 2020s belong to Jersey Mike's. In 2025, the sandwich chain topped 3,200 locations in the U.S., a stunning rise from around 1,000 in 2015, and 2,000 in 2021. It's been one of the fastest-growing chains in the country, averaging a 20% annual increase in sales over the last 20 years, and topping $4 billion in total sales in 2025. That's a lot of sandwiches, but that meteoric rise hasn't been enough to topple the number one sandwich chain in America: Subway. At least not yet.

The simple fact is that as huge as Jersey Mike's recent expansion has been, Subway's growth in the '90s and 2000s was unbelievably massive, and it still has far more locations. According to QSR, the sandwich behemoth ended 2025 with more than 18,000 locations in the U.S., and sales of just over $9 billion. In fact, Jersey Mike's isn't even in the top three in sandwich sales yet. Arby's narrowly leads it in third, although with Jersey Mike's hot-selling subs, it should take that spot any day now. And number two is still Panera, which had $5.9 billion in sales in 2025.

But look under the hood, and Subway's sales lead looks far less impressive. Despite having almost six times as many locations, its sales are only a bit more than double Jersey Mike's. That's because the average Jersey Mike's location does $1.36 million in yearly sales, compared to only around $500,000 at Subway. So while Subway can rely on store count to call itself number one, head-to-head, a single Jersey Mike's dominates a Subway.

Subway's position atop American sandwich chains is even wobblier than those low individual store sales numbers versus Jersey Mike's would suggest. No other major sandwich chain averages below $960,000 in per-store sales, according to QSR, and most go over $1 million. In fact, Jersey Mike's isn't number one here either, as Panera averages an impressive $2.6 million per store.

And Subway has been shrinking precipitously. 18,000 locations is impressive until you realize it had over 27,000 in 2015. But that massive expansion was also its undoing. There were so many locations so close to each other that they started cannibalizing each other's sales, and Subway has been beset by failures and mistakes. It has been shrinking locations for nine straight years, including closing more than 700 stores in 2025.

While Jersey Mike's is on the upswing, it risks repeating Subway's mistakes. The chain was sold by its former owner and founder, Peter Cancro, to the private-equity firm Blackstone in 2025. The following year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the new Jersey Mike's owner was taking the sandwich chain public, with the initial filing claiming plans to expand to 15,000 locations. That's a five-fold increase from its 2025 total, although no timeline for those plans has been revealed. Even with the chain being highly profitable, that's a number no other sandwich chain except Subway has ever come close to, with the next biggest chain, Arby's, having 3,200 locations in 2025. Maybe the quality and service that people love at Jersey Mike's can survive an expansion like that, but history would make someone second-guess that.