Subway is America’s favorite sandwich shop, but there’s rising interest in Jersey Mike’s.
It’s national sandwich month, and for weeks Americans have been debating their favorite type of sandwich. YouGov released results of a survey on just that topic to start off August and the results were, well, cheesy.
We thought it might be a good time to take a look at how Americans feel about fast food companies that specialize in sandwiches (we’re not talking hamburgers or hot dogs here, but deli style).
The YouGov Plan and Track tool gives us a glimpse into what the country thinks about sandwiches. We compared six chains on two metrics: Quality and Recommend (how likely people are to recommend the shop.)
Our data relies on answers from more than 18,000 respondents who have been asked about sandwiches chains over the last year. We made sure to limit this group to individuals who have said they’ve eaten at least one sandwich over the last year.
Subway leads across all categories, according to YouGov Plan and Track data. It benefits from a massive national and international footprint and a large advertising budget, which could explain its dominance in this category. When we remove our filter for people that eat sandwiches, the disparity between Subway and everyone else only grows.
But the chain is trending down in terms of its year over year performance when it comes to Quality and Recommendation scores among folks who say they’ve eaten at least one sandwich this past year. It's not clear why there's been a dip in perception, but it's not even close to knocking them from the top spot. It could be that Jersey Mike's is eating into its share.
Jersey Mike’s which YouGov started tracking this year, holds down the second spot in most categories, including Quality and Recommendation metrics. The only category that Jersey Mike’s does not maintain its second position is when it comes to Ad Awareness, which is YouGov’s measure of whether someone has seen an ad for the brand over the last two weeks. Jimmy John’s grabs the second spot for Ad Awareness.
Jersey Mikes has been franchising in 1987 and boasts of more than 1,500 international locations. By comparison, Subway has more than 42,000 locations around the world -- making it the biggest fast food shop --- and has been around since 1965.
