The fast-food sandwich business is struggling, and it’s not just Subway

Quiznos’ weak unit economics led to years of sales declines and closures like this one. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.

The U.S. consumer still loves sandwiches. What the sandwich looks like and contains can vary, but there is little question that they love themselves some meat, cheese and/or other stuff between two slices of bread.

How they get that, on the other hand, has changed.

Consumers are not getting their sandwiches from quick-service chains nearly as much as they once did. They are shifting to higher-priced brands. And the shift is a lesson in both industry economics and business strategies and the state of the U.S. consumer today.

A lot of that is due to weakness among the two largest fast-food sandwich brands, Subway and Arby’s. Those two brands account for 77% of the quick-service sandwich business. Subway’s sales have declined by 5% over the past five years, thanks to an 11% pullback in location count. Arby’s, meanwhile, has declined by 5%, also due to unit closures. 

But it’s not like the rest of the sector is flourishing. Even without those two chains, the sub sandwich business has grown by just 1.8% over the past five years, a number that is well below menu price inflation of 28.8% over that period. Median sales growth among the 77 quick-service sandwich chains grew less than 1%. 

That business has been losing market share to higher-end, fast-casual brands, where there are more growth brands and the larger players are performing better. Fast-casual chains’ sales have grown by 25.4% over those five years, though that lags inflation, and includes a hefty 14%-unit growth. 

Sandwich chains tend to include a wide range of concepts, from sub brands like Subway to brands more akin to burger concepts like Arby’s, from bagel brands to bakery/café chains like Panera Bread. Subway, a fast-food chain, competes intensely with fast-casual brands Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy Johns, and Firehouse Subs far more than its fellow quick-serve Arby’s. That can make it more difficult to draw firm conclusions. 

Yet the diverging results between the two sandwich subsectors illustrates the shift in consumer demand in the post-pandemic environment. 

Fast-casual brands typically have higher price points and higher quality reputations. And they’ve been able to take share from their cheaper competitors. 

But the shift can’t be completely explained that way. On average, fast-casual sandwich chains have better business models than their fast-food rivals. The cheaper chains have, as a result, struggled to compete, forcing them to cut quality or service. 

A large portion of the quick-service sandwich sector consists of brands that tried to mimic Subway’s success in the 1990s and early 2000s, by pushing ultra-aggressive development of locations with low unit volumes and little focus on per-store economics. The result is an entire sector that is generally weak and prone to chain struggles and outright collapses. 

The median quick-service sub chain had unit volumes of just $713,000 in 2025. That’s less than half the $1.6 million average at fast-casual brands.

As such, many fast-food sandwich brands are in steep decline. Nearly one-third of the nation’s quick-service sandwich brands have seen sales decline by more than 10% over the past five years. 

Subway, the largest sandwich brand and 10th largest chain in the U.S., is not one of them. But it has closed more than 11% of its locations over the past five years, and a quarter over the past 10. Its volumes, at just over $500,000 per store, have improved 17% over the five years, which has helped keep some stores open. But it remains in an overall state of decline.

Two former major rivals have not been so lucky.  Quiznos, which once boasted nearly 5,000 U.S. locations, is down to 145. The chain generated just $415,000 in unit volumes last year. Its system sales have declined 29% over the past five years. Blimpie, meanwhile, has declined by 30%. It once operated over 1,600 U.S. locations. It is now down to 88 locations.

Contrast the performance of those three chains with that of Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy John’s and Firehouse Subs, the second, third and fourth-largest fast-casual sandwich brands. Those three brands are direct rivals to the above fast-food brands, but they have far superior economics and quality reputations. 

They each generate at least $965,000 in average unit volumes. Jersey Mike’s has grown by nearly 90% over the past five years. The other two chains have grown more modestly, Jimmy John’s by 19%, Firehouse by 16%. But they’ve been far more resilient in a post-pandemic environment. 

In simple terms, the business models of fast-food sandwich brands have forced operators to cut quality, which has exacerbated sales challenges. Consumers, frustrated by what they see at the cheaper chains, trade up to the higher-priced fast-casual brands. And the result has made matters worse at the fast-food chains.