Subway's lower cost of operations helped it gain ground against McDonald's, all you need is a walk-in fridge, freezer, sink, sandwich line, and enough space to store everything, and the fee to start one up is a third of McDonald's. A lot of the reason why it tastes so bad usually comes down to the following (I used to work at one of the restaurants):
- The tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions all come in boxes and are sliced at the restaurant. The quality varies on this, tomatoes are the worse, they're either underripe or a few steps from rotten, and often rotten tomatoes do get in the box. Rarely do the tomatoes look good.
- The "yoga mat material" was always highly disenginuous, but the bread isn't good, coming in as frozen sticks, thawed, and then allowed to rise somewhat, but it's not a good bread--it's too mushy when it's hot and quickly goes stale.
- ALL the meats are packaged elsewhere. Reformulations in 2015 cheapened them further, with what was black forest ham going to thin, pitiful lunchmeat-type slices.
- Almost no quality control, either it's a franchisee that doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, or a multiple-site franchisee that will keep loser stores open to maintain market share.
