Mustard back on menu at restaurant

Majority of seeds grown in Sask.

A condiment conundrum that broke out over an apparent decision by Subway to stop serving yellow mustard at its restaurants in Canada seems to have ended with the return of the beloved condiment.

The reported imbroglio stems back to a tweet several months ago by Dr. Sylvain Charlebois of the Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, also known as The Food Professor on X, formerly Twitter.

“Breaking News,” he wrote on X on Feb. 23. “Subway is reportedly discontinuing yellow mustard in its Canadian restaurants, despite Canada being the world's largest exporter of condiment mustard seed.”

This was followed up by social media posts from others, including X user Emma Jackson, that showed what reportedly appeared to be an internal memo from Subway.

“Yellow Mustard has seen declining demand across Canada,” reads a copy of the memo as shared online by Jackson. “As a result, we have decided to discontinue yellow mustard bottles.”

However, as news of the outage began to spread and outraged social media users demanded the return of the condiment, Subway officially started singing a “transitionary” tune. Posts on X that referenced the restaurant's reported decision would receive the same boilerplate reply. “At this time, Subway Canada is transitioning mustard vendors, which may impact the supply of yellow mustard at certain restaurants,” it said.

Then, a call from Charlebois last week (after lunch) confirmed that yellow mustard is back — at least at the Subway nearest his office in Halifax.

“I talked to the employees,” he said of his latest visit to the sandwich shop. “The yellow mustard was discontinued for a while, but it came back last week. They actually brought it back.”

Charlebois said he couldn't comment on Subway policy based on a single conversation with one employee, but he speculates the chain may have quietly dropped the condiment, unaware of its popularity and patriotic appeal, and then just as quietly reversed the decision.

“The PR backlash probably didn't help and forced the chain to reconsider,” he speculated, adding: “We saved yellow mustard!”

Charlebois pointed out that Canada is the largest exporter of mustard seed in the world, with much of the crop grown in Saskatchewan.

“It's a big deal out west,” he said. “We produce the seed, we export it, and then we buy it back in the bottle. There's a lot of Canada in that bottle.”

He noted that restaurants will typically make a big deal of new offerings, but remain quiet when items are removed from menus.

Indeed, the most thorough information on the Subway decision comes in the aforementioned apparent internal memo. Under the address “Canadian Franchisees,” it says: “As part of the next phase of our transformation journey, we are continually pressure-testing our menu in order to streamline your operations and deliver high-quality products for our guests. This includes removing low-performing items from the menu in order to create space for new ingredients and menu innovation.”

It notes: “Yellow Mustard has become a slow-moving product in our restaurants.

But a Subway spokesperson denied any plans for discontinuation.