Subway Keeps Its Lead in the Sandwich Wars

Quick – what's the biggest fast-food outlet? If you said McDonald's, you're close, but not close enough.

The answer is Subway, the somewhat quirky sandwich shop chain that contends its cold cut-based sandwiches are healthier and lower in fat than burgers and fries, now has 33,749 outlets worldwide, compared to 32,737 for McDonald's.

All of the fast food chains are looking to Asia for future growth. After all, there's a fast-food or coffee outlet on just about every block of major American cities. How much more can we eat, anyway?

Subway doesn't plan to be left behind. It opened its first international restaurant in Bahrain in 1984 and just opened its 1,000^th, in Vietnam. It expects the number of overseas restaurants to surpass its U.S. total by 2020.

McDonald's is banking on China to provide much of its growth in the next few decades. It now has 199 outlets in China but expects to have 500 by 2015.

Subway, a privately held company owned by Doctor's Associates Inc., has achieved much of its growth by focusing on non-traditional outlets. It has stores in car showrooms, ferry terminals, riverboats and at least one church.

Subway's growth hasn't come at the expense of its customers' waistlines. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a stern critic of the restaurant industry, has given Subway relatively high marks over the years.

“Its heavily advertised line of six-inch subs with no more than six grams of fat didn’t get there with fatty meats (or with cheese or oil). And the chain uses light mayo in its tuna and other salads and always asks if you’d like light or regular mayo on your sub roll. Nice goin’,” CSPI said in the September 1998 edition of itsNutrition Actionmagazine.

McDonald's, on the other hand, frequently gets the back of CSPI's hand. In June 2010, it threatened to sue McDonald's if it continued “using toys to market junk” and in 2004 panned the burger chain for a “Broken McPromise” to eliminate artificial trans fat from its cooking oil.