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I don’t know how anyone can eat that s**t.

Are there no good sub shops across America?
Or am I just blessed that I live in the northeast, where there’s one on practically every other street corner??

Or am I just blessed that I live in the northeast, where there’s one on practically every other street corner??

I grew up in CT when Subway was starting to expand. There are/were great grinder shops in Connecticut, like Rosa's Deli in Wallingford, and the now closed Angelo's Pizza in North Haven. It is funny that CT spawned Subway out of Milford (near New Haven!) when there were so many better places.

Here is the secret to their early success, partially used today.

Cheap cost of entry, easy to get a franchise.

Heavy use of two-for-one coupons, and a cheap loss leader sub.

In those days, they were one of the few places open late at night (in Wallingford, it was them or Mr. Donut). Combine that with HEAVY promotion on hard rock FM radio (WPLR-FM), and they had a huge following of adolescent/20 something partiers, potheads with the munchies on Friday and Saturday nights.

If Domino's built an empire out of fast, cheap delivery, Subway built its franchise out of late night fast munchies combined with lunch friendly coupons, NOT out of great food.

Are there no good sub shops across America?

None I’ve found. But Publix supermarkets have a deli sub so good I’ve been buying two of them a week for the last fifteen years. You’d expect to burn out after all that time, but they’re as good as the first one.

I live in the northeast, where there’s one on practically every other street corner?

The "Italian sandwich" was created in Portland Maine by Giovanni Amato in 1903. (We still have Amato's Italian restaurants in Maine.)

It's a long fresh Italian-bread roll, with ham, cheese, green peppers, onions, tomato, pickle, black olives and olive oil. But you can get them any way you want. Sometimes I get the same, only with salami and mustard.

Flatlanders call them subs.

As others have mentioned....Subway sucks....and so does Red Lobster.

I used to live in the Boston area and there was a plethora of great sub shops. No chains but independently owned sub shops where the owner made most of the subs himself. My favorite was the fried egg and mushroom.

I find the "Subway" chain concept very unappetizing. Reminds me of a school cafeteria. All those condiments, meats and cheeses just sitting out in those metal containers for who knows how long as the teenager workers put them together assembly line style.