Hey,
in western hemisphere sandwiches are extremely popular - people eat them for breakfast, at lunch, dinner etc - my question is, why they are so popular?
In our country (Eastern Europe) we have Subway, which isn't very nice IMO (white dry bread, too many customizable ingredients, random bacon etc) and some places are trying to emulate Subway but are quite quickly out of business...

Does people consider sandwiches as being healthy alternative too for regular lunch during the workdays? What about Subway's sandwiches or you don't really care about them (too fast food)?

Some eye-candy too:

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2...t-now-in-gifs/

I think people eating at subway think they're eating healthy.

I imagine people in europe take longer to eat lunch than in the US, so can have something besides a sandwich. sandwiches are definitely about convenience.

Are sandwiches really so popular? I must admit that I see almost nobody eating them too often, whether it is in an office or at home for dinner. I'll +1 the post above that if they are in fact popular, it would be for convenience, given the western hemisphere tends to work much harder and more efficiently, with less time for breaks/food.

I don't think anyone knowledgable of nutrition, who eats a regular sandwich with normal bread, thinks they are being particularly healthy, but I could understand why someone eating McDonalds regularly would think Subway is healthy given the comparison. Where I live (NYC), places like Chop't or other similar salad shops are always super busy, same goes for places like Chipotle. Rarely do I see a line at a place like Subway that comes anywhere close to the lines at places like those. For breakfast I don't see people eating sandwiches often, though I occasionally eat an egg sandwich that I make myself. Dinner it is essentially never.

In my experience, sandwiches are just eaten once in a while, mostly just for lunch, and rotated amongst a number of different meal options like salads, soups, sushi, pizza, etc.

That said, the sandwiches in your link look pretty tasty. I'm definitely not knocking on them in general, but I'd never go out of my way to get some super ritzy one. I'd get one if I hadn't had one in a while, and it was convenient to do so on that particular moment. Not sure what the overall point of your post was other than asking about trends in the food industry. I assume you're considering opening a sandwich business on the notion that everyone in the western hemisphere eats sandwiches all day every day.

The Western hemisphere is hard working, which is why we have fabulous economies. We have a lot less time for lunch, if any at all. People eat sandwiches because they're fast and easy. The rest is just habit.

I'm guessing it's a combination of things: you're more insular, eat far more traditional ethnic food, have fewer fresh vegetables/influences, especially during winter when the good stuff is shipped to the wealthier countries, and venerate meat more. It creates a habit of palate rejecting of light/fresh tastes. When I eat out in an average restaurant in Eastern Europe, nearly all of the stuff on the menu is meat with lard (steak with lard, pork with lard, turkey with lard, pasta with lard, lard with lard sauce...) Many Westerners have a fresher/more international palate than that, which is more attuned to sandwiches. I think you also have stigmas around food and salads and what is good and bad food. For example, vegetarians are looked at as freaks. I've been greeted with open disbelief many times that I was a vegetarian and yet tall/well built/not falling over from exhaustion. That kind of mindset doesn't exactly lend itself to sandwiches.

It's a bit of both. They're fast easy cheap quasi-healthy food.
Honestly I'm not surprised sandwich stores are doomed in Eastern Europe. People are creatures of habit. The best way to overcome habit is to initially play to them (An ultra meat sandwich!!! With extra lard! Be a man one try one) and marketing that plays to those habits.

So just put a 400 gram steak between 2 pieces of bread. Ill come and give it a try next time im in the neighbourhood

but this quote made me think about it

" It is worth noting that the sandwich market is over 3 times the size of the UK pizza market, and currently stands at £3.5bn per annum spent by the public on sandwiches each year."

Sandwiches are pretty much the most popular lunch in the UK

Funny thread I like it

Lol, the western hemisphere works harder? http://www.businessinsider.com/avera...ld-2013-8?IR=T

I guess you took my statement and ignored its true meaning so that you could look at hours? The key to what I said was "harder and more efficiently." Hours worked is completely irrelevant, and it is actually a statistical fact that people working very long hours typically result in far less productivity. This is why any example you pull up, such as your Singapore example, that shows many hours worked in spite of very little (call it a rounding error for an American comparison) actual productivity. Here is statistics from actual OECD data found in this article: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18144319

And to quote it:

arent the amount of hours the japanese work as well as their efficiency (no bull****ing for years about every decision, just do what the boss tells you) the reason they are still alive with that humongous government debt ? And not just alive, but very developed and advanced.

I have a hard time believing we work more efficient really on a personal level. Half our working population is busy with bull****. making rules, circumventing those rules, fighting about them in court. Many managemen layers.

In my view, we are more efficient because we have been ahead for some centuries during which we have build an infrastructure, economy and level of education that keeps us ahead. That and world dominance trough the petro dollar.

Our working ethics though could be our downfall in the future. We have become fat and lazy trough our wealth.

I'm not sure if you are kidding and realize that Japan is the worst off of all developed nations. In case you're being serious:


Japan's GDP in 1995: $5.3 Trillion.
Japan's GDP in 2015: $4.9 Trillion.

20 years of negative/flat growth. Are you sure the Japanese work culture is the nation you want to make your stand on here?

If you were kidding, well then carry on.

I'm eating a sandwich right now. I am not in a rush. It's just tasty and has bacon on it

same but I live in a state that meat + cheese + white bread is above average in healthy eating though.

interesting subject.

i always notice in london the number of prepared sandwiches avail at underground train stations (didn't want to confuse with word,subway) .. i eat them and like,them

someone in barrons this week says prepared food is dead forever.he's shortMCD

sorry ipad type

every culture has their equivalent food of convenience - there's no point in trying to sell them on a new concept. if a sandwhich shop is goging to work it's because the logistics are managed well and you can do that with a lot of different types of food.

This is related to a very interesting topic about international branding and positioning for fast food chains.

I don't know anything about Eastern Europe but I do know in Asia, the fast food chains found out the hard way that Asians (Chinese, Japanese and so on) don't want SUPER CHEAP food. They couldn't get people to take free food samples but they could get them to pay $1.00 (cheap for us, but not in most Asian countries) for the sample.

I have heard tons of explanations for this. Branding? Food safety? Association of cost with quality? Not wanting to be seen eating free food? (apparently this is a thing: broke people eating samples at super markets)

I am taking logistics as a given by the way. You can forget about branding and sales if you can't get your logistics in order.

Sandwiches are actually the most commonly eaten lunch & dinner item in the US & 4 of the 5 largest restaurant chains sell primarily sandwiches. Most of the fastest growing chains sell sandwiches. Indys sell them just as much. Bread is the 2nd or 3rd largest category in retail grocery & luncheon meat sales are pretty close to eggs. We eat lots of sandwiches & I would bet NYC is #1 in sandwich consumption even if we back-out burritos.

I think sandwiches can be universal-but many miss the key building block to a sandwich-and that is the bread- while I am not a Subway fan-bread is the lynchpin to their success-the smell and appearance of fresh bread allows them to use lower standard meats and cheeses, hence allowing a lower price point with acceptable margins.

To carry this to the question, can a brand (or demand) built around sandwiches be built for markets? I think the answer is probably yes-but it needs to be built on the bread-this will need to appeal to local tastes-the filling can always be a regional play on core ingredients.......I don't have first hand knowledge, but logic would tell us that what Subway sells in London is not the same as what they sell in Salt Lake in terms of product mix, but their core offering allows them to play in both markets.