American fast-food chain Subway arrives in France

Résumé du document

Subway is an American fast-food chain specializing in sandwiches and salads. Its slogan is 'Eat Fresh'.
There are more than 28,417 Subway outlets in 86 countries of which 70 are in France. In the USA, this franchise is even more popular than Macdonald's with more restaurants! Subway is continuing its worldwide expansion and is currently targeting Europe.

In order to understand this report better and to be on the same wavelength, it is very important to define some key words such as restaurant, sandwich and fast food.

According to the dictionary, a "restaurant" is a place where you can buy and eat a meal.

The word 'sandwich' that we use today means: "one or two slices of bread between which are laid meat, vegetables or cheese" . This word originated in London in 1762 when an English nobleman from Sandwich Islands, John Montagu, was too busy gambling to stop for a meal even though he was hungry. The story goes that he ordered a waiter to bring him roast-beef between two slices of bread.

Concerning "fast-food", this word means: "food that can be prepared and served very quickly". The modern history of fast-food started in America on July 1912 with the opening of a fast-food restaurant called the Automat in New York. The Automat was a cafeteria with its prepared foods behind small glass windows and coin-operated slots. Numerous Automat restaurants were quickly built around the country to deal with the spike in demand, and they became extremely popular throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Their slogan was "Less work for Mother".

Extraits

[...] This translation is a good consensus because it fits to both languages, either on a linguistic point of view (French) or on a phonetic point of view (English). Swiss cheese Swiss cheese has not the same meaning in the USA and in France. We will see how Subway has overcome this issue For Swiss or French citizen, “swiss cheese” assigns a cheese coming from Switzerland. There are in this country about 19[10] varieties of cheeses. Some of them are made with goat milk, some others with cow milk. Each one has his own characteristics, recipe, flavour, taste, size. [...]

[...] Basically, the difference is that a common sandwich is done with bread and a wrap is done with tortilla. Wraps are promoted as diet sandwiches and have recently become popular in NAFTA and Australia with burger and sandwich restaurants. Some fast-foods such as Subway or KFC have already integrated it in their menus. Why wraps are not in Subway's menus in France? I did many searches but it has been quite hard to find soundly argued answers to that question. Personally, I strongly believe that the reason is certainly linked with our bread culture. [...]

[...] He has to choose between five kinds of bread (Italian herbs and cheese, parmesan oregano, white, wheat and honey oat) and two different sizes of sub: six inch” or foot long” (sometimes called a twelve-inch). What the two sizes are? When Larry started with Subway in the USA he proposed two sizes of sandwiches, but instead to name them with an adjective such as medium or large (what does it really means?), he had the great idea to introduce a unit measuring their real length: six and foot long[8].” Thus the size of the Subs were very precise and everywhere the same. [...]

[...] o In the same manner, all the French fast-foods such as Brioche Dorée”, Pomme De Pain” 3 Brioches” (based on French bread) have kept their trademark when they have been exported abroad (USA, Australia, Europe) because French gastronomy has a very good reputation and it would be a non sense to translate those trademarks into foreign languages. It would be the same non sense translating Subway into French (Métro). o Moreover Subway has become a franchise. A franchise is a legal and commercial relationship between the owner of a trademark, and an individual wishing to use that identification in a business. [...]

[...] Why to call a fast-food Subway? This is quite a strange name, is not it? Find the origin and the reasons of this name was a difficult task because I found many versions, some of them are more coherent than others. I selected the three ones which makes more sense to me: When Larry was 22, he went to New York with a couple of friends to celebrate the end of the academic year. He named his restaurant Subway due to an experience he had in the New York subway network: he met there a girl who will become later his wife! [...]