Subway, Jersey Mike's rival has closed over 4,500 restaurants

3 hours ago 4

Daniel Kline

Sat, November 15, 2025 astatine 12:47 PM CST 5 min read

Subs — besides called grinders, hoagies, heroes, wedges, and a assortment of different determination names — are benignant of the 2nd authoritative American sandwich, down the hamburger.

They're versatile, arsenic a sub tin beryllium a acold sandwich laden with acold cuts, vegetables, mayo, and assorted spreads, oregon a blistery sandwich, specified arsenic a meatball hoagie, chickenhearted parmigiana grinder, oregon my favorite, a steak and food sub.

Many would reason that the Philadelphia cheesesteak is the modular setter.

"There are a batch of sandwich shops retired determination that tout the freshness of their ingredients. But fewer tin lucifer a section favourite Philly cheesesteak store successful presumption of sheer volume. This means that adjacent precise fashionable sandwich shops successful different parts of the state are lone getting caller merchandise delivered erstwhile oregon doubly a week, which is plentifulness for pushing retired a fewer 100 sandwiches per day," Mashed reported.

Singer Patti Labelle told Drew Barrymore connected her speech amusement that technique, not determination makes the champion cheesesteak.

"According to Patti, putting food astatine the bottommost of your hoagie bun and topping it with cooked steak provides capable vigor for the food to properly melt. The extremity effect is identical to what you’d get from a much accepted method for Philly cheesesteak, wherever you screen the steak with food and navigator until melted," the Philly autochthonal and edifice proprietor shared.

Those of america from Boston, however, find the Philly statement silly. A Boston-style steak and cheese, which uses provolone oregon American cheese, is superior, overmuch similar the Patriots are amended than the Eagles, the Red Sox are amended than the Phillies, and the Bruins intelligibly person an borderline implicit the Flyers.

Regional arguments aside, Subway has been the wide nationalist sub concatenation leader, with implicit 19,500 locations successful the U.S. unsocial astatine the extremity of 2024.

Another chain, Quiznos, was erstwhile connected the emergence and looking to drawback up, but its autumn was spectacular.

Subway: By acold the largest chain; QSR 50 reports implicit 20,133 U.S. units (data was from earlier the concatenation purged underperforming units).
Jersey Mike’s Subs: 2,684 full units, according to QSR 2024.
Jimmy John’s: 2,644 units, per QSR 2024.
Firehouse Subs: 1,209 units, according to QSR 2024.
McAlister’s Deli: Listed successful QSR’s apical chains, with 539 units successful its 2024 breakdown.
Source for each above: QSR Magazine Top 50
Charley’s Philly Steaks & Wings: Frequently appears successful apical sandwich-chain lists.
Source: Entrepreneur
Potbelly Sandwich Works: Not ever apical by sales, but commonly listed among apical sandwich franchises.
Source: Tony Boys NJ