Subway's Fall: Doctors Associates, the $5 Footlong Revolt and Roark

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Subway began in 1965 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when 17-year-old Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from family friend Dr. Peter Buck, a nuclear physicist, to open Pete's Drive-In Super Submarine Sandwiches and pay for medical school. Their holding company, Doctors Associates Inc., nodded to Buck's doctorate and DeLuca's ambitions. Renamed Subway in 1968, the chain turned to franchising in 1974 and grew to more than 37,000 locations in over 100 countries on low startup costs of roughly $200,000 to $500,000, paired with royalties of about 12.5% of gross sales. The "Eat Fresh" pitch, sandwich artists and Jared Fogle, credited with one-third to one-half of growth from 1998 to 2011, drove the boom.

Fogle pleaded guilty in August 2015 to child pornography and illicit sexual conduct with minors and received more than 15 years in federal prison. The $5 footlong, launched in 2008, squeezed franchisees until it was dropped in 2018, while the azodicarbonamide "yoga mat chemical" petition and a 2017 CBC DNA test on its chicken hit the brand's image. Fred DeLuca died of leukemia in 2015, U.S. stores began closing in 2016, and Roark Capital bought the company for $9.6 billion, a deal the FTC cleared in April 2024.

• In 2020 Ireland's Supreme Court ruled that Subway's bread had so much sugar it counted as a confection rather than bread.
• A 1999 hepatitis A outbreak in Seattle led to a $1.6 million class action and a $10 million settlement for a six-year-old who needed a liver transplant.
• Subway filed a $210 million defamation suit against the CBC after the network reported its oven roasted chicken was 53.6% chicken DNA.
• Soldier Leon Beatty Jr. sued after Subway seized his stores while he was deployed to Afghanistan, settling confidentially in 2010.
• After Subway ended its Russian franchise agreements in June 2024, the former franchisee rebranded the stores as Subjoy.