Subway began with a borrowed thousand dollars meant to fund medical school
In 1965 Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from family friend Peter Buck to open a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, hoping it would pay his way through medical school. He never became a doctor, but the holding company still carries the name Doctor's Associates. By 2010 his chain outnumbered McDonald's worldwide.
That first Bridgeport shop, on Main Street, went by the name Pete's Drive-In. The holding company's name nodded both to DeLuca's tuition plan and to Buck's doctorate in physics. Growth followed through franchising: a first West Coast store in Fresno in 1978, the first outside North America in Bahrain in December 1984, Canada in 1986 and Britain in 1996. Not every move worked; a 1989 purchase of the Boston fried-chicken chain Cajun Joe's flopped, and most of its outlets had shut by the end of the decade.
At the end of 2010 Subway had 33,749 restaurants, 1,012 more than McDonald's, and by September 2023 it counted over 37,000 in more than 102 countries and territories, making it the largest single-brand restaurant chain. Every outlet is run by franchisees. Opening one costs less than rival brands, roughly $200,000 to $500,000, but owners hand back around 12.5 percent, among the highest shares charged in the industry. Menus shift by country: outlets in India serve no beef and offer far more vegetarian dishes, and a Punjab university campus got the first all-vegetarian branch in 2012. The best-selling B.M.T. was named with a nod to the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit railway, echoing the subway theme.
Troubles came later. Foot traffic fell 25 percent after 2012, and in 2016 the chain shrank in the United States for the first time, closing more than 800 American stores in 2017. In 2019 John Chidsey became the first chief executive from outside the founding family.
After six decades of family ownership, Roark Capital agreed in August 2023 to buy Subway for $9.6 billion, completing the deal on April 30, 2024, after the Federal Trade Commission's review.
Source: Subway (restaurant)
