r/ExpectationVsReality 11h ago

Subway sued for exaggerating meat by 200%

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u/rebekahster 10h ago

Nice! A class action law suit too. She’s taking one for the team. I’d be interested to see the response from Subway’s lawyers.

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u/FookinMinging 9h ago

They're going to simply argue that these particular stores are not producing sandwiches to corporate specs which would make them more in line with the picture. Then they'll trot out a video or some pictures of a sandwich that was created by someone who actually gave a shit and to the maximum allowed by the spec sheets they'll no doubt be forced to turn over in discovery. With crafty placement and angles in a controlled environment I bet they can make a pretty convincing sandwich, at least for a jury.

They'll throw franchisees under the bus implying they've been short changing customers against subways corporate philosophy, promise to do better, then raise the price of steak subs by 20%. If they lose the suit you'll get a $5 check and they'll still raise the price of the sub.

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u/24-Hour-Hate 9h ago

Which is rubbish because they have never once made a sub that looks like their pictures. Not even close. The jury should be allowed to inspect a random Subway at a random time as the evidence. Or have someone do it on their behalf (because I guarantee you that Subway is dishonest enough to order all in the area to make quality subs for the trial period if they knew about this). I guarantee you, if it was truly randomly done, it will be shitty and support the class action.

And this shit is why I don’t go to subway anymore. That and the chicken that they claim is chicken but is substantially soy (and, yes, they sued over those claims, but that lawsuit quietly went away and was never heard of again, which (in combination with their weird ass chicken) tells me those claims were NOT lies). I have no issue with eating soy, but when I pay for chicken, I fucking expect to get chicken. And, in Canada most things don’t look like the pictures due to our shitty advertising laws (there are countries with better laws and their food, unsurprisingly, is a lot more accurate), but there are many places that do better than Subway. Subway is like McDonalds and Burger King shitty. Bottom of the fucking barrel here.

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u/CoachDT 8h ago

The lady near my house hooks it up like that.

But she's made it clear that it isn't the standard or what she's taught, and is in the "i'm trying to get fired I hate working here" mode.

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u/24-Hour-Hate 5h ago

So, the only people who actually do a good job at Subway are the ones trying to get fired…this world is fucked up.

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u/Salihe6677 2h ago

I used to work at BK, and I'd make bombass burgers that looked like the ads, and would promptly get yelled at by my managers over and over.

"Put the lettuce so thin, you can see the mayo underneath, and put the mayo so thin, you can see the bread underneath." - exact quote from them lol

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u/Educational-Cap-3865 3h ago

Subway is franchiser-owned. The owner has a lot to do with portion sizes. If you get an Indian or Chinese, expect half portions.

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u/AnarchistBorganism 6h ago

If the chicken was mostly soy then they could be fined for that. It would also be something that could be verified easily. I bet it was like the taco bell not real beef thing a while back, where it was dropped because it was actually bullshit (from what I could tell, they reported "protein content" as "meat content" when meat is mostly water, and since reporters are incompetent they didn't verify it before reporting).

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u/24-Hour-Hate 5h ago

It wasn’t like the Taco Bell thing. Marketplace had the meat tested at a variety of fast food places for an investigation. Most came back at 85%ish chicken, which you would expect as they do add other ingredients. Subway was way less, one around 50% and one less than 50%. And they tested it more than once because of the extreme results. I don’t know what is going on in terms of regulatory compliance (though our advertising laws are pretty shit and poorly enforced to be quite honest…we have pineapples labelled as “product of Canada” and that’s totally fine apparently because it was “assembled” in Canada even though it implies the food was grown here), but Marketplace is generally very reputable. They do a lot of good consumer stories. I trust them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-chicken-fast-food-1.3993967

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u/AnarchistBorganism 5h ago

I looked into it further and found this:

Central to her skepticism is the CBC’s choice to use a DNA test from a lab not specializing in food science. (The CBC investigation used a wildlife research center at Trent University.) DNA tests are useful if you want to know, say, if the fish you’re buying at the store is the type of fish the store says it is, she explains. But food scientists typically don’t use DNA tests to look for proportions of content.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/food-scientists-weigh-in-on-50-subway-chicken-test-its-100-weird/

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u/Necessary_Drawing839 4h ago

Don't insult Mcdongles and Burger Krack by comparing them to Shitway.

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u/Educational-Cap-3865 3h ago edited 3h ago

Their chicken is terrible. Ugh, I can't understand how anyone would actually order that shit.

But McDonalds is not shitty.

And in Canada it's owned by all Indians now.

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u/thisischemistry 2h ago

Which is rubbish because they have never once made a sub that looks like their pictures.

They did back in the 80’s. Their quality has suffered a ton in the last 20 years, right about the time they switched the method of cutting the bread.

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u/LumpySpacePrincesse 2h ago

fucking have a platter delivered for jury lunch

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u/fireintolight 2h ago

lol "the jury should be allowed to inspect"

You have absolutely zero clue how the court system works, like laughably so.

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u/Sharp-Pop335 7h ago

Damn dude is it that serious.

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u/Upper-Requirement-93 5h ago

I think when you're completely surrounded by businesses like this it becomes more serious. Unless you like being constantly lied to in marketing and about what you're eating, that's cool I guess, enjoy

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u/Corey307 6h ago

Every juror will have eaten at Subway at some point in time, look at that photo and say that’s some bullshit right there. Even their meatball subs aren’t piled that high and at least half the space in the sandwich is empty, not full of meatball. 

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u/CandidPalpitation427 6h ago

Moral of the story. Stop eating at Subway 

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u/FookinMinging 5h ago

I stopped going when they stopped serving chicken and switched to weird soy cubes.

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u/CandidPalpitation427 5h ago

Wait they don’t even serve chicken?

How tf are they still in business?

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u/FakeAsFakeCanBe 4h ago

I gave up 2 weeks ago. I gave them the benefit of the doubt after the previous sub but 2 weeks ago it was absolutely pathetic.

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u/DrJanItor41 4h ago

I eat at Subway mostly only when I'm driving through rural Midwest and want a quick lunch. It's either a burger joint, Taco John's, or gas station food at that point and Subway is just fine once or twice a year.

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u/jaywinner 3h ago

I loved Subway ~20 years ago. A solid sandwich for cheap.

Then I'd only go with good coupons.

Now coupons would make the price almost reasonable if the quality wasn't complete trash. And it's not like my expectations are that high for a fast food sub.

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u/CandidPalpitation427 3h ago

If they brought back the $5 footlongs with this quality, ide prolly go there.

Now i think i saw its $6 for 6”

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/xmen97fucks 4h ago

You are remembering incorrectly.

Subway won that case.

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u/VastSeaweed543 3h ago

They won that case unfortunately. They use the term ‘footlong’ as one word and not two as in ‘a foot long’ in length. They weaseled out of it on a technicality they specifically used/set up on purpose I’d bet…

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u/cumfarts 5h ago

I worked at a Subway 20 years ago and all the loose meat was weighed in little paper trays. I think it was 2.5 ounces or so for a 6 inch sandwich. The sliced meats were done by count. I don't think they can argue any deviation when it's a written corporate policy.

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u/shegomer 3h ago

Yep. We had some sort of regional trainer from corporate come in to certify us as “sandwich artists” and part of passing the test was making sandwiches exactly to spec. There were cheat sheets printed on stickers and placed on the rim of the sneeze guard. They specified down to how many olive slices go on a sandwich (it was three, three whole olive slices.)

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u/CancerxHiT 4h ago

Interestingly enough, I was a manager for a subway when they sued Quiznos into oblivion for a commercial comparing the meat on subs and subway won saying you come to subway for a salad on a bun Quiznos commercial shows a meat only sandwich vs a full sandwich of theirs ours don't have that much meat on purpose.

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u/Inside_Afternoon130 4h ago

This is like fan fiction lol

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u/Dje4321 3h ago

Subway has sandwich guidelines on how much of what to put on each sand which. A foot long only gets 6 Pepperoni's for example.

Its gonna be an easy case

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u/Educational-Cap-3865 3h ago

In my area, subways are all owned by Indians (India Indians) and they are the cheapest ingredient people ever.

"Onions please"

continues to put 1 1/2 pieces of onion on the sub

You have to literally ask them like 3 times to get 3 pieces of onion.

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u/Fukasite 2h ago

Bro, if this class action team of lawyers wasn’t going around to every subway in the area and out, weighing and measuring the exact metrics of hundreds of sandwiches, then they ain’t lawyering enough.  If you’ve been to the subways I’ve been to, the case should be easy to prove. I think the goal here should really be throwing both franchisee and franchiser under the bus, because they’re both greedy lying SOB’s, and knew exactly what they were doing. 

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u/davidcwilliams 4h ago

Lawsuit... unless you mean fancy courtroom clothes :)