If you’ve ever heard a commercial on television for Subway with its trademark jingle “Five-Dollar-Footlong,” you’d probably walk into your local Subway restaurant expecting to get a footlong that is, well, actually a foot long. This was the expectation of an Australian teenager, Matt Corby, when he purchased a Subway footlong in Perth, Australia and decided to measure it, finding that it was only 11 inches in length. He published the photo to Subway Australia’s Facebook page with the caption “subway pls respond,” according to The Huffington Post. The post got over 100,000 “likes,” and “comments,” and sparked a flood of similar posts from around the world.
As a former Subway employee, I remember that to bake the bread, sets of pans were used. These pans had rows of rectangular slots for the bread to go in, and when the baking process proceeded, the bread would rise within the slots and all come out perfectly the same shape. Or so that was the idea. Rarely did any two loaves look identical, and although the bread was supposed to take the shape of the slots they were put into, sometimes it was like they had a will of their own. Acting as rebellious teenage bread loaves, they would usually do as they pleased, sometimes spilling over the side of the pan, sometimes not even reaching the end or filling the entire slot. This is by no means an acceptable explanation or excuse for the estimated four out of seven footlongs in the NYC area measuring less than 11 inches in length, according to The Huffington Post, but I can understand that at least some wouldn’t measure up to the estimated expectations.
Some might ask why those rebellious loaves that come out incorrectly don’t just get thrown out, but just think how much wasted bread that would be. Yahoo News states ,“Legal experts said Subway may argue that the average length of the Footlong is 12 inches and that only some fall short.” This sounds like a reasonable argument but a difficult one to prove. Sure, 100 footlongs could be measured, and the average may come out to be 12 inches, but then a different hundred footlongs could be measured and the average may come out to be 10, 11 or 13 inches. Each sample would differ, and thus it seems it would be difficult to convince customers that their missing inch is justified.
So has Subway lost its customers’ trust? Well, no one seemed to mind the inch that was lacking before Corby’s photo, but now that the cat is out of the bag, they are arguing that size does, in fact, matter. Three separate lawsuits against Subway (or Doctor’s Associates Inc., Subway’s parent company) have begun in the United States. There is one current lawsuit in Chicago, a lawsuit in New Jersey and a lawsuit in Philadelphia, according to Yahoo News.
According to the Maine Sunday Telegram, Nguyen Buren is the person filing the lawsuit in Chicago. Tom Zimmerman, who is the lawyer representing Buren in the case, says, “This is no different than if you bought a dozen eggs and they gave you 11.” In this argument, I feel a bit compelled to disagree. I see how the principle is similar, but one egg is a bigger loss than one inch when you take into account that Subway allows you to pile high your vegetables on the sub with no limit. In my Subway experience, I would have to guess that to satisfy consumers, Subway would just make the pans longer, but use the same amount of dough to bake the bread so it would spread out further but wouldn’t actually give the customer any more volume of food, just a larger surface area to please the eye. I also have to believe that the Sandwich Artists (Subway’s technical term for sub-maker) would just spread out the meat and other ingredients within the sub to stretch it out to fit the “extra inch” of bread, giving it the appearance of more food.
I certainly agree with the lawsuits arguing the principle of false advertising on Subway’s account, but to say that customers are missing out on a hugely significant half inch, or inch, of food, is a dramatic over-exaggeration on the pain and suffering that consumers in an already obese America are supposedly suffering. The online Examiner says, “It seems unlikely that any judge would award someone a settlement when all sandwiches are made to order, to a person’s specifications.” I completely agree with this statement. So what if you’re not getting 12 inches length-wise? You can choose what meat, cheese and vegetables you want on a bread flavor of your choosing, and then you can pick every vegetable on the board and tell them to put extra of it all, for no extra cost! Any Sandwich Artist will put exactly what you ask for on your sub, even when it’s impossible to close the sandwich at the end. They only have an additional charge for extra meat and cheese, and since those are the more fattening ingredients on the sandwich, I believe they’re doing us all a favor in that sense.
Subway’s slogan is “Subway, eat fresh.” They attempt to promote healthy eating, but ironically with rampant obesity in America, three different lawsuits have come up against them seeking over $5 million in “compensatory damages” for the clients, according to Yahoo News. Personally, I think they should just make Subway change their advertising trademark of the “footlong” sandwich, pack on the extra vegetables sky high and be content with the low prices offered for nearly a foot in length of food.. I don’t think an extra bite of food is the difference between being hungry and being satisfied. But apparently for some customers, size matters.
Avery Twible can be reached at avery.twible@spartans.ut.edu
Fatasses everywhere