Subway down the road

I discovered Subway circa 2003, in a store inside Brigade Mall on Brigade Road, Bangalore, a city where I had moved in from Calcutta to finish my graduation. My first order was placed with the help of a friend, who walked me through the various options of bread, sauce and vegetables, which I was completely unaware of and I was worried if all that was worth the effort, since the Sub came for the same price as a sumptuous plate of Chicken Biriyani from nearby iconic Meghna Biriyani. Even then, Subway was expensive for the amount of food it served to large-portion eaters, and continues to be almost equally priced now, that means a non-veg Sub costs as much as a plate of Chicken Biriyani. 

For me, growing up in middle class Calcutta in a socially upwardly mobile family of Bangladeshi Post Partition refugee background, to moving to Bangalore to study, Subway was more like a rite of passage to a more elitist world - one needed to know what a Jalapeno was, and not pronounce it the way it is written - that is, Halapeno and not Jalepeno. And then know, everything from Parmesan Oregano to Honey Mustard to Black Olives. Subway demands its customers come well researched and well versed with its menu, even if it means losing customers (or never having them in the first place).

Over the years, nothing changed with Subway - on one side my middle class upbringing did not let me order anything other than the cheapest option of Sub Of the Day (the only option that costs less than a plate of Biryani), and on the other side, Subway's own determination to never change its looks,  taste and equal conviction to provide the same element of "choice" to customers in terms of breads, vegetables and sauces, even though its sales never looked up in India. The only thing that changed was that occasionally I began to crave a Sub over Biriyani and also, that my dietary needs changed from a perpetually hungry student to a more diet conscious small-sized-portion-eating working woman for whom a 6 inch Sub would suffice as a meal. 

Subway's latest advertisement on YouTube, still positions itself as a brand that provides freedom by giving the element of choice to its customers. Still, after so many years, it still has not understood that Indians do not seek such choice in a country of standardized menus - that go to the extent that multiple Indian curries in most restaurant serve the same gravy base. 

But really, what is the value of such freedom and choice for those who neither know the difference between mint mustard sauce and chipolata ? Of all the time I have spent at Subway stores, there's always the divide between those what a Halapeno is and those who get bewildered by a Jalapeno. If you thought customer was the king for a brand, then Subway's counter-intuitive strategies to continue to bewilder, confuse and belittle the consumer's lack of knowledge of its ingredients and processes. My parents, for example, refuse to ever pick up a Subway for me, even if they visit a mall, because they mind the entire process too complex and too elitist and too alienating for them. 

The idea of 'Choice' among consumers as Sheena Iyengar correctly pointed out in her book 'The Art of Choosing' is very much a subjective cultural term.  Much like most of the books written in business book genre to which her book belongs (Iyengar is a business school professor), the core idea was illustrated and re-illustrated and re-re-illustrated through multiple examples - one of which was the idea of choice in the soda market. In many countries, a store stocking a few brands of soda would mean the consumers are spoilt over choice, whereas in the US, unless an entire section is stocked with more than 20 varieties of soda, it isn't really much of a choice for a consumer. In the former type, the idea of having access to a soda drink was considered immense choice of consumers (who were indifferent to the brand differentiation that existed in the category - a soda drink was a soda drink, as long as they could just about get their hands on any), whereas in the more consumerist society, like the US, a stack of soda options, with minute differences in taste, constitute enough "choice" for the consumers.

In India, no one orders a salad without standard dish with variations - except occasionally asking for mellowing down the spice content of the gravy. A biriyani isn't a biriyani, if you ask it to be made in olive oil and with brown rice, and an Idli is a Idli, served the same way all over India. 

Why then doesn't Subway understand that no one seeks choice in a sandwich, and that too a choice of items unknown to local palette and local taste? With its sales not growing world over, it almost seems like Subway is on its way to a dead end.