New on the menu: Subway sandwich chain explores potential sale

theguardian.com:

Fast-food chain Subway has put itself on the menu – announcing on Tuesday it is exploring a possible sale of its business after 58 years of family control.

After years of rapid growth, rising costs and mounting competition from rivals have taken their toll on the company in recent years, but it still has more than 37,000 restaurants in over 100 countries – making it one of the largest chains in the world.

The Wall Street Journal said last month a potential sale of the company could value Subway at more than $10bn.

Founded in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1965 as “Pete’s Drive-In: Super Submarines”, the chain was the brainchild of then 17-year-old founder Fred DeLuca and family friend Peter Buck, who lent DeLuca $1,000 to get started.

In its early years, Subway was very much a family affair: DeLuca’s mother ran the first shop and his sister and wife both worked for the company.

The idea of running a fast-food company that DeLuca claimed “provided a healthful, less fattening bill of fare” took off when the company turned to franchisees. By 1987 it was opening 1,000 stores a year and was ranked by Entrepreneur magazine as the top franchise company in the world.

But scandal has also dogged the company. Its former spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2015 on charges of receiving child abuse imagery and other sex crimes.

Fogle had attracted DeLuca’s attention after he read an article about an Indiana man who lost 245lbs while eating Subway sandwiches. He went on to become the face of the company for five years.

More recently, an Irish court ruled that Subway’s “bread” could not be defined as bread for tax purposes because of its high sugar content. Subway’s signature sub was found to have five times more sugar in