What Went Wrong With Subway's Breakfast Menu?

When you think of Subway, the first thing that may come to mind is the distinct smell of Subway's bread baking. However, if asked, what went wrong with Subway's breakfast menu? Your response may be, "Wait, Subway serves breakfast?" Yep, and even many of the sandwich chain's loyal customers were unaware, which is probably one of the top reasons the company cut back on it. But, then again, it's also just not very good.

Subway stopped requiring franchisees to serve breakfast back in 2018, and in a comment to Business Insider in June of that year, the then-Vice President of Subway North America James Walker said, "Each Subway location and customer base is unique, and our goal is to provide franchisees with the resources to deliver an exceptional guest experience while running a profitable business. Their success is our success." This most likely translates to: Breakfast just hasn't been very successful at Subway.

There were a couple of red flags, even back then. Bloomberg reported in the same year, that, according to survey by market-research group Field Agent, 43% of Subway customers didn't eat Subway breakfast, and 19% didn't even know that they served it at all. Subway breakfast is still very much available in certain locations, but franchise owners are no longer required to open their doors at 7 a.m., as they were from 2010 to 2018. However, while you can still get your hands on it, you should still probably avoid Subway for breakfast altogether.

Subway's dedicated breakfast menu is mostly built around flatbreads and wraps. A lot of the items are made with ingredients that appear on their regular sandwich menu, with some eggs tossed in here and there. So, many seem a little forced or shoehorned in. The chain's breakfast menu offers some, theoretically, healthier options when it comes to fast food breakfast, like the Eggs Florentine Flatbread. But many of them are just, well, weird. Subway's steak, egg, and cheese melt is the perfect example of a fast food breakfast that's not worth your time. And that's why it performed so poorly in Chowhound's ranking of fast food breakfast sandwiches.

Steak for breakfast is certainly not out of the question. Steak and eggs are a breakfast icon, after all. But Subway's steak is a rubbery, overcooked mess, really more of a cooked roast beef than steak. It offers little flavor, which may be for the best, because it definitely doesn't look appetizing. The steak is fatty and the egg precooked and processed. If you're hitting Subway for breakfast, you're probably better off ordering from the regular sub menu. When it comes to breakfast on the fly, you may want to look for a more classic fast food breakfast. Maybe go for something on a bun or biscuit, like the top three options from our aforementioned fast food breakfast sandwich showdown: Jack in the Box, Chick-fil-A, and Carl's Jr.