QSR Magazine: Subway Unveils Digital Makeover

Subway has its fingers, toes, and foot-longs crossed in hopes that the roots of its problems are digital.

The world’s largest sandwich chain is betting big that a top-to-bottom overhaul of its digital program—even creating an entire digital division as its own entity—will lift the chain out of a nearly two-year funk that’s allowed several regional and fast-casual competitors to gain ground. The move follows a two-year slide in sales and unit growth that has included the death of its founder, Fred DeLuca, and the public relations nightmare surrounding former spokesman Jared Fogle’s prison sentence. Last year, the company’s system-wide sales fell by $400 million from 2014, while it added just 145 net stores last year (after years of growing often by 1,000 units or more).

For Subway, the digital revolution is do or die. That’s especially true as competitors like Jersey Mike’s and Jimmy John’s nibble away at its core business, and as fast-food giants like Starbucks, Domino’s, and Taco Bell invest heavily in digital-forward plans.

By creating an entirely new digital division dubbed Subway Digital, which places all customer-related digital technology under the umbrella of a single group, Subway hopes to stop the bleeding and ultimately pull ahead in the ultra-competitive quick-service category.

“The world has changed,” says Carman Wenkoff, chief information officer and chief digital officer at Subway. “The customer experience starts outside of the restaurant now—not inside.”