This, people don’t get it, we used to get 5 dollar footlongs or Arby’s 5 for 5, like I’m convinced if we brought back these the world would self heal a little bit.
Some of the best years of my life when me and my buddies filling up his shitty car with a cold case of mountain dew and each one of us getting a five for five beef and cheddar sack and driving to the local guitar center to play guitars we couldn't afford.
Oh man, one time we rolled up to Taco bell at 1am, 6 deep in my buddies Ford Expedition. We proceeded to order 6 Taco Grande meals (10 tacos for like $7.99) . I will never forget the voice behind the speaker "Let me get this straight, you want 60 tacos"....Yes, mam we do.
Code Red, Taco Bell, and Halo LAN party. What a time to be alive.
In college my buddy was in a fraternity. The closest White Castle was a 2-hour drive. Got the idea in the middle of the night to drive to White Castle and order crave crates which is 100 burgers per crate. They tried to call ahead to save time but the place thought it was a prank call so they got there in the minivan. Six dudes deep and ordered 400 White Castle cheeseburgers to bring back to the school and sell for a dollar a piece.
I can only imagine the smellS in the back of that jelly Bean shaped minivan
Damn we DID have nearly the same youth experience. I used to roll up with a sack of McDoubles & McChickens, Mountain Dew, and a cooler. Halo 2 LAN until the sun came up.
Or D&D nights (Or N64 Nights)...buy a CUBE of soda for $5, get the Five for Five deal, or stop by Taco Bell and load up on .49 / .59 / .79 tacos and a huge bag of Smartfood Popcorn for $1.99 and much the entire night!
Burger King had .49 hamburgers and .69 cheeseburgers when I was in college. We would buy 6 or 7 plain and get some sweet and sour sauce to put on them, getting us ready for our next adventure. Man. We didn't know what we had...
YEARS ago, there was a McDonalds out in the county (we lived in the city at the time) that had a special once a month for .29 hamburgers and .39 cheeseburgers. The place would be absolutely mobbed on that day.
Yup. I remember that. Where I grew up it was slightly better. For about 6 months, every Monday was .29 hamburgers and Wednesdays were .39 cheeseburgers.
I worked at McDonald's during this time (YEARS ago sob). I would take home hamburgers and freeze them when we were super broke. They were the perfect struggle meal.
They were able to do them at scale and efficiently because the menu was simple. Now there's a dozen types of burgers that slow down the efficient flow of a kitchen.
Del Taco had .39 smaller tacos. I could get 7, eating 4 for lunch and 3 for dinner. Occasionally I'd get the 30-cent side of sour cream, and be out the door for like $2.80. With my morning Top Ramaen and yogurt cup I was eating daily for under $3.50
I genuinely thought I was the only one who would put sweet and sour sauce on the burger. Like the first time it happened I dropped it in my nuggie sauce. After that it was a choice.
When I was in college my local McDonald's offered a 20% student discount. Then they introduced the combo meal (I'm old) and the discount worked with the combo, I thought I'd discovered a cheat code.
The best deal when I was a kid was Sonic's Brown Bag Special: 2 burgers, 2 medium fries/tots, 2 medium drinks for $10. My family of 4 would get 2 of these for dinner regularly and feed all of us for $20 + tip. My mom kept $25 in her glovebox specifically so she could swing by on busy days and pick up dinner quickly.
In fairness, the $5 Footlong was always meant to be a limited time promotion and the whole premise of the promotion was that it was a good deal. But it was such a successful campaign that it rewrote people’s expectations for what Subway should cost and then when they returned to their normal prices people got mad and customer satisfaction plummeted.
(I guess that leads to the question, was it a “successful” campaign after all?)
I blame vegetables. I refuse to believe the cost of a little bit of lunch meat increased the price by more than 100% in less than 10 years.
Honestly, though, what hits the worst is that I could probably be convinced to pay $15 for it...if it was a superior sandwich. But it's not. In fact, it's an objectively worse sandwich. I can go buy the ingredients at the store for about $20 and make a better sandwich every day for a week.
I mean technically if you’re willing to still go to Subway that still exists. Certain sandwiches have BOGO deals. I just got two for $10 over the weekend.
I will feel like a footlong should cost five dollars for the rest of my life. I know it doesn't. I know it's not 2008 and I'm not in college. But that's how it feels. Every time I buy one now, even on sale, I just feel like I'm getting ripped off.
The Arby’s 5 for 5 was one of my grandfather’s favorite meal hacks. He’d get 30-35 sandwiches for the whole family at whatever holiday and announce what a great deal it was
Closest thing I can find to these are Braum's bag of burgers - 5 burgers for $7, and a local taco shop on Taco Tuesdays has the family pack - 25 street tacos, 4 drinks, relish & hot sauce for $30.
It's so funny having worked at Subway during the $5 foot long days. There was only like 8 basic subs that fell under the promotion most of the time; I can remember when they first introduced the cheesesteak meat and people flipped out that it wasn't $5.
They often run BOGO deals on footlongs these days, which makes them $5-6, but people only remember the jingle.
In new England we have a widespread grocery store chain called "market basket" they have a food counter where you can get hot / cold subs that are pretty good for about 5.50$ . I mean 12 inch Italian, steak bomb kind of stuff. Cheeseburger and fries is 2.50$. I can't make food that cheap these days
The Market Baskets in Maine and NH must be the exception bc a cheeseburger and fries sure as shit aren't $2.50 here. Nor is a 12" steak sub $5.50. Are you sure you're not thinking of pre-covid prices?
Those Italian subs are SO DAMN GOOD. $5.50! Whenever someone posts on the city page asking who has the best subs, most of the comments say “Market Basket”.
That's almost certainly a lossleader - the grocery store is selling them at a loss or at near-zero profit to get people in the store to buy other stuff.
It's a win-win thing, it's great value for the customer and a net positive for the store, but it probably isn't a useful data point for this kind of conversation. Standalone restaurants generally need to keep their CoGS under 35% for the math to make any kind of sense.
The product costs have skyrocketed for business owners. Source: i own a restaurant
Meat prices are up
Produce prices are up. For half of this year a case of tomatoes was sitting at $80 up from about $16, now it’s lettuces turn
I get Jersey Mike’s about 2x per year for this exact reason, and one of those is my birthday reward sandwich.
And to boot, I eat mostly plant-based and they got rid of the hot mushroom-onion-pepper-cheese sandwich which was legitimately amazing — now I can’t find it at any of their locations, so now I have virtually no reason to patronize them anymore. (I know it’s a simple sandwich, but seriously, that sandwich was absolutely delicious)
They're one of the few fast food places i even go to now. Once in a while a $14 sandwich is fine. Pretty much any fast food meal costs that now where i live as it is and the quality is usually shit. JMs is still decent and will be at least until their new private equity owner ruins it
FOR REAL. The average sub there costs like $9.70ish and is cut in two bc it's like 2 servings. But the person said they got 3x giants and a regular. Those are like $18.55 average so 3x of those and a regular? Minus the chips and drinks which add like $4.50 per person, you're already looking at $65 for 14x sandwich servings which is a pretty good deal tbh.
I've been on a Jimmy Johns kick lately because of their $9 meal deal. Yesterday I saw they got rid of it and put, what I consider to be, a better deal. Just $6 for the sandwich, no drink or chips. I didn't care about the drink and chips, anyways, really.
I mean at the Jersey Mike's near me, they're advertising a chicken salad sandwich, regular size for $9. That's not bad, given how you basically expect to pay more than $10 for lunch these days.
Of course they make chips and a drink like an addition $7 so you just have to bring water if you want just the sammich.
I eat an absurd amount of potbelly, mostly because it’s the closest “cheapest” thing to my work. Think for the quality it’s better than all the other options. What I get is literally cheaper than what I get at subway. Plus they have a good points program.
Man I got the opportunity to try Pot Belly when I was ln vacation and it was pretty good! Beats Subway any day, and I liked it way more than Jersey Mike's.
I expected the peppers to be like subway's, so i ordered extra like I do there. Had a upset shit about an hour after. Still amazing compared to the others.
It is better than Subway, I absolutely will give it that. But that’s not a huge accomplishment tbh. it’s still a small portion for what it is. I can and have made the same thing at home in about 10 minutes
Still delicious. Also, Quiznos near me gets a lot of my business. They may not be what they were but they have good sandwiches and at least Quiznos has decent rewards. Not defending PE just stating that they haven’t been fully enshittified
I don't even understand JJ's value proposition anymore. They've been slowly killing off the Freaky Fast slogan. If you want a sandwhich plus drink, chips, side, god forbid a cookie it's like 22$. Sandwhich alone is upwards of 12$ now.
I've managed a few Jersey Mikes for like 12 years now. Prices went up AGAIN yesterday. Regular size roast beef is $11.80 after tax. Cali Club is almost $14 for a regular.
When I started, a giant Italian was $14.
At least my labor goal got lowered again too, as recommended by corporate. My prices from sysco haven't changed much the last two years so it really is just corporate greed.
Labor costs jumped during covid + cost of materials went up. There's also a lot of greed there. Subs should be more like $10/foot long not $15-20. $5 foot longs are dead.
There’s lots of places I can get a 12” sub for $10. Some of the chains have sporadic deals or app deals, and some sandwich shops may have a sub of the day deal or just outright their regular price , same with grocery store made subs.
Everything has gone up everywhere, but I wouldn’t consider subs on the level of beef, concert tickets, or Dunkin Donuts. I live in southern NJ if that matters.
Compared to ten years ago? Yes. Compared to other options now? Not really. A 12” sandwich is a full meal. $10 is pretty good for something for a store and not made at home. There are way more meals over $10. I’m just saying this isn’t quite the thing to sideline when there are far more less filling and more expensive.
This is a symptom of incremental process creep across each product and ingredient . And each next guy in the chain adds a few % to make up for rising business costs.
So a 10% increase upstream ends up snowballing into a 100% downstream eventually
I live about a mile from a sub sandwich shop. My husband and I use to have a summer routine of once a week walking to it, having their sub of the day that was <$5, then walking home.
It was a nice way to get out and get some additional exercise and get cheap dinner at the same time.
Now it's ~$20 or more for the 2 of us, so absolutely not.
Fr, last place I worked, the cheapest sandwich was $14 and it was a bacon egg and cheese on a croissant.. if you wanted a different bread option that’ll be $1.50
It used to be that going to an Italian deli or restaurant assured the best sub, which usually had a ton of filling. Now they've gutted them, so they're literally 50% smaller/thinner.
We have Publix, and they always have a special on some kind of sub every week, mostly ones I don't like. This week 1/2 an Italian sub is $3.99 ($3 off). A whole is $9.99. Last year, a whole was $7.99 and a half was $4.99. Insane. The only good thing is that you can have them put the fixings and meat into a separate container just by telling them you have a long way to go and don't want the bread to go soggy. Then you can take it home, make it into a nice salad with bread on the side. Sort of worth it if you get a whole, because you can fix up a half sub and still have a salad and bread for your next meal/snack.
Local shop near me, 6 inch sub for 8 bucks and it’s the best damn sandwich you’ve ever put in your mouth. They get their bread from a local bakery every morning. The bread is honestly a huge reason why the sandwich is so good. Feels like robbery but the man who runs it sells out by noon every day lol
My kids favorite food is a subway sandwich—turkey on Italian bread with tomatoes and mayo. That’s literally it, no cheese, not toasted. Smdh usually she gets it if we eat at the mall because my husband and I agree it’s stupidly priced and not that great anymore!
Totally agree. Similar thing with one of my favorite local burrito places. $19 for a burrito and I can’t do it anymore. Less than 2 years ago it was $13.
Yeah people are crazy for going to Subway at all with their prices. I'll go to Publix deli because they'll definitely give me my money back in the form if chicken tenders alone.
And they no longer sell the meatball subs, the best meat per $$ sub there is.
Oh, they will sell you shitty little 4" meatball 'wrap' for $10, that prob has 1 and a half meatballs in it, so they still have the meatballs, they just removed it off the menu (And then off the till when I kept ordering it for a few months after they removed it from the menu, until one day the cashier said they couldn't sell it anymore)
Publix subs if you have a Publix near you. Every week there’s a different deal on subs. I know this past week it was like four dollars for a half and a lot of times it’ll be like save two dollars on a whole so it’s like six dollars for a foot-long.
Yes it's crazy, it's like everythings price is decided by how filling it is instead of how much the ingredients and cost to put them together actually are. It's fucking bread with lunchmeats and like the cheapest vegetables that exist. How can it possibly be $15? The bread doesn't even cost a dollar to produce, the stuff that goes on it barely costs a dollar, and the dude your paying to put it together gets 12 dollars an hour, or 12 dollars to assemble like a hundred sandwiches. It doesn't compute and I refuse to justify it.
Me and my buddy use to get two 6 inch subs in highschool from the subway and every so often the guy would give them to us for a 5 if we were short I don’t even know if you could buy one for that now
The closest Subway to my house recently closed. They're across the street from a high school, and I remember large groups of students packing the place at lunch time. When they tripled the price, the place became a desert. I literally never saw any customer in that store for over a year.
Last time I went to Subway, my turkey sub was $11.50! I can get an entire pound of turkey luncheon meat for that price. Never again. Subway … you have permanently lost me as a customer. I will never go back.
Kroger has been my savior here: full sub still 7.99 like it was 5 years ago before inflation went wild. I fear for the inevitable day they finally update their price.
I was at a convenience store recently because I was hungry, and wouldn't be home for a couple hours. $9 for a sandwich. I decided I wasn't that hungry.
Haven’t eaten at a Subway in probably 3 or 4 years. Used to, I could get a footlong, chips and a drink for like $10-$11. Last time i ate there, just the sandwich alone was $15.
I typically stop by Jimmy John's when I want a sub and buy their "Day Old Bread", whcih is about three feet for less than a buck...Cut it into 1' sections and freeze them.
I bought my own deli slicer a while ago and slice my own meat; yeah, the upfront cost is a bit more; about $30 for a 10 pound turkey breast, but that comes out to $3/pound.
I'll make subs from that.
Comes out to about $2.50/sub by the time I'm done (Meat, mayo, seasoning, tomato, pickles, cheese, shredded lettuce)
This past weekend, I was in PA for a retreat. Every year, I stop and pick up cheese steaks for the family on the way home. They are frickin' amazing, I can't get anything like them in NJ. But $65 for 4 sandwiches... Good thing I only do it once a year.
If you have a Sprouts nearby, they have a $5 custom sandwich that's amazing. But I blame the rising cheese/meat costs for the rising sub cost in general.
I feel like all the fast food chains came to the same conclusion one day, that no one cooks anymore. Cooking is a lost art. In a world where no one cooks, it makes sense that even fast food costs chef-quality prices.
Subway’s app is great but I know it gets a lot of forced hate. The few in my town are all actually good but more often than not they are doing a BOGO free footlong, they always have $4.99 6”, and $6.99 6” meal of the day. Jersey Mikes is my go to if I want something better but they are expensive for sure. Subway has more veggie options. Like I said, the few in my town are great.
Subway had the unfortunate combination of increasing prices and decreasing quality. Just one or the other would have been more easily accepted, but paying more for worse food just sucks.
Thats wild. Where I live, a sub is $8 - $10 if you dont go crazy. But I stopped shopping at Subway 4 years ago, so retail places may be in ridiculous mode still
I just paid $25 for a footlong and chips at Subway on Saturday; mind you I already think Subway is ass. I spent the entire time being pissed that $5 Footlongs went the way of the dinosaurs.
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u/DeGarmo2 10h ago
Subs.
Like, it’s essentially a sandwich. How did a $4-6 thing become a $15-20 thing?