READ MORE: Where Subway ranks on this year’s QSR 50, by sales, AUV, and moreīefore an 866-store decline from 2016–2017, Subway added 4,456 restaurants the previous six years combined. There were 23,802 stores headed into 2020 and 24,798 locations by year-end 2018. That’s 1,612 fewer than the previous year, and the continuation of a sloping trend. Subway ended 2020 with 22,201 domestic locations. It didn’t take long for Chidsey to lock in on Subway’s greatest differentiator and perhaps also its greatest challenge. They hail from Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International Dunkin’ Yum! Brands Outback owner Bloomin’. Of the top 100 employees in Subway’s leadership team, some 75 percent are new hires. He officially joined in fall 2019 and got to work. Subway needed to figure out who it wanted to be in its next act.Īnd Chidsey thought he might have an idea. Perhaps not stuck in a malaise, exactly, but it lacked direction. DeLuca, 67, battled leukemia since 2013.Ĭhidsey says Subway lost its way a bit. Just weeks after Subway’s 50th anniversary in September 2015, co-founder Fred DeLuca, who started the brand when he was 17 in 1965, passed away. The 56-year-old company, private its entire life, didn’t operate with any real sense of urgency, Chidsey says. Like Burger King, labeled by some a floundering chain before Chidsey took over in 2006 and engineered a turnaround, Subway was trudging in neutral. Yet if there’s one figure in this business that can reawaken somebody’s attention, it’s this: Some 95 percent of Americans live within a 10-minute drive of a Subway.Īnd yet the ubiquitous nature of the world’s largest restaurant chain wasn’t indicative of an opportunity that had run its course. It had been eight full years since he stepped down at the burger giant a year or so after its 2010 sale to 3G Capital. The former Burger King chairman and lead executive was content to offer advice on boards, invest, and generally not consider the idea of directing another major restaurant chain. John Chidsey had a comfortable seat on the sidelines.
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