A meticulous Subway customer in Australia found himself very angry when he whipped out a measuring tape and discovered that the footlong sandwich he ordered was actually just 11 inches, not 12. The patron, Matt Corby, was so angry that he took to Facebook, where he posted a picture of the fallacy with the caption, “subway pls respond.” The photo quickly received over a 100,000 likes and prompted other Subway customers to measure their footlongs.
The New York Post followed up with Corby’s complaint and took the city streets to see how New York’s Subway sandwiches measured up. They averaged that about four out of seven footlong sandwiches only measures 11 or 11.5 inches.
“That’s foul and misleading. They state it’s a foot long, so it should be a foot long!” Juan Rivera, a regular Subway customer, said.
Subway blames the discrepancy on the fact that its bread is baked fresh daily in each of their 38,000 restaurants.
“We are committed to providing a consistent product delivering the same amount of bread to the customer with every order. The length however may vary slightly when not baked to our exact specifications. We are reinforcing our policies and procedures in an effort to ensure our offerings are always consistent no matter which Subway restaurant you visit,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Is all this hype really worth the extra inch? Normally, I couldn’t care less if my sandwich was 11 or 12 inches, but Matt Corby had every right to point out Subway’s error; if you’re going to advertise a product as 12 inches, it better be 12 inches! It’s not like it’s called “the five dollar almost footlong.”