Subway Restaurants

Subway’s new gourmet sandwiches were the centerpiece of a product rollout last summer that may have been the largest menu initiative in the chain’s 36-year history.

Right from left: Mark Christiano, baking specialist; Chris Martone, corporate chef; & Suzanne Greco, director of R&D, were key contributors to the rollout of Subway Selects Gourmet Sandwiches.

“It was massive,” says Suzanne Greco, Subway’s director of research and development. “Typically, we have one sandwich new to the menu, but this time it was 13 changes that took place.”

And when you’re talking Subway, you’re talking big. The chain has 14,800 stores worldwide. In North America, where the menu line extension was rolled out from Aug. 28 until Oct. 8, more than 13,000 stores were involved.

The Subway Selects Gourmet Sandwiches now on the menu board are horseradish roast beef, Southwest steak and cheese, chicken asiago caesar, and honey mustard melt in ham, turkey or bacon.

The menu initiative was part of a comprehensive program to create improved flavor and taste. The Bridgeport, Conn., firm was spurred on by findings of a QSR study indicating that customers wanted more taste and a wider variety. The result for Subway was the “Got To Have It” program, or GTHI.

“GTHI centered on creating a new, comprehensive Subway menu,” Greco says. She adds that it included sauces, gourmet breads, improved meats, directions on the way sandwiches were constructed and bread was cut, and some meat formulation.

Research and development played a key role in Subway’s overall strategic plan to increase unit-buying levels.

“We had a specific R&D goal as part of this company effort,” Greco says. “We identified what consumers were looking for and then said, ‘OK, what do we have to do to get there?’ ”

A key player in the operation was corporate chef Chris Martone, who is responsible for new-product development, menus and food costs. He is a 1989 Culinary Institute of America graduate who joined Subway two years ago. He had previously worked at Rio Bravo in Atlanta before changing focus to become part of operations management at Aramark in Virginia.

One of Martone’s chief tasks is visiting locations to ensure that sandwiches are made consistently throughout the chain. Frequently on the go, the 31-year-old chef clearly loves his job. “I’m having a great time,” he says. “I play with food all day, travel across the country, see different people.”

Greco has been at Subway for 16 years, starting in operations before there was an R&D Department. Today the group has 20 employees.

“In R&D you’re always presented with new ideas, new concepts and new technologies,” she explains. “There’s always someone suggesting something that we could be doing better or faster. I love the pace. It’s fast and exciting.”

Every Tuesday Greco meets with Fred DeLuca, who founded Subway in 1965 with a $1,000 loan from a family friend and co-founder Dr. Peter Buck.

“With Fred we review the results of our testing before we go into anything big,” she notes. “We also review things with a Systems Advisory Committee composed of all company entities. Our purchasing and advertising co-ops also are involved. Plus, we're always looking at what others are doing.”

One of the keys to the Subway menu extension was the addition of sauces. They brought new excitement to the sandwiches, according to Martone, who personally tasted as many as 300 different sauce combinations. “That was last spring, and I'm still feeling the effects.”

Also new to the menu board was a line of gourmet-flavored breads. In addition to the standard Italian and wheat varieties, the chain introduced Hearty Italian, Parmesan Oregano and Harvest Wheat.

Mark Christiano, baking specialist for the R&D Department, notes that “the development of the new bread flavors was the result of many years of experimentation, market research and field testing.”

So interwoven are the new products into the Subway menu that often it’s hard to get a handle on what’s new. Martone puts it into perspective.

“The sandwiches are new because we added new ingredients like honey mustard. In other words we had a Subway melt before, but now we have a honey mustard Subway melt. We had roast beef sandwiches before, but now we have a horseradish roast beef."

The process of mixing and matching the sauces and breads began with Martone’s working on the formulas and then presenting them to a small group internally. “We narrow the sandwiches down to about a dozen and put them in front of consumers who narrow them down further,” he explains.

Coordinating the launch to so many stores was the biggest challenge for Greco. “We had to create a lot of merchandising tools, including items that fit into every type of store application.”

A big hurdle was the redesigning of the menu board to include photos of the new sandwiches on each panel, making the menus brighter and easier to read. “The new photography had a big impact on sales,” she notes.

“Our R&D goals have been met,” notes Greco, adding that the impact of the menu has generated double-digit sales growth for the chain.