Subway drops its $5 foot-long deal

Company will no longer require franchisees to run the special.

It was March 2008 and America was about to belly flop into the Great Recession.

Wall Street powerhouse Bear Stearns had just imploded, sending shock waves through the world financial markets. Savings and jobs were beginning to vanish. Foreclosure notices were papering over neighborhoods. And as a financially terrified nation began rummaging the couch cushions for spare change like never before, Subway launched the $5 foot-long special.

The budget deal — 12 inches of bread, meat and veggies for a few bucks — became an immediate hit for the Connecticut-based fast-food brand. As Businessweek reported in 2009, within the first two weeks of the campaign, sales shot up 25 percent on average at Subway shops. The marketing jingle became a pop culture phenomenon. Eventually, the $5 foot-long would generate $3.8 billion in nationwide sales by the end of August, 2009, lifting Subway into the top 10 fastfood brands in the country.

Fast forward to today: the $5 foot-long as the world knows it is no more.

In an interview with USA Today, Subway CEO Trevor Haynes revealed the company will no longer require franchisees to run the special. In recent years, the promotion had become a contentious point among store owners, some of who felt the deal did not help their profitability. Moving ahead, owners will be able to decide on their own if they want to use the offer, according to the paper.

“How do we help our franchises with more of a regional value message, so they’re able to (have) a value proposition that fits with their economic model,” Haynes told USA Today. “If you look at California, there’s a very different cost of business than in Arkansas.”

The chain started in 1965, the brainchild of a 17-year-old named Fred DeLuca who hoped the business would put him through medical school. The origins of the $5 deal reach back to 2004, when a Miami franchise owner named Stuart Frankel noticed that his two Subway restaurants at a local hospital were dead on the weekends. His solution was to knock a buck off the usual price for a 12-inch sandwich — hence $5.

“I like round numbers,” Frankel told Businessweek. Soon, his hospital restaurants were swamped on the weekends. The promotion caught on with store owners until the corporate office took notice and brought the special to all the company’s locations.