The Homa Files

The marketing principle: Ubiquitous distribution.  Coke wants to always be within arm’s reach of every person. That’s ubiquity.

Now, Subway wants to be in every nook & cranny – anywhere somebody might yearn for a sandwich.

Punch line:  It’s official: the Subway sandwich chain has surpassed McDonald’s Corp. as the world’s largest restaurant chain, in terms of units.

At the end of last year, Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide, compared to McDonald’s 32,737.

Subway just opened its 1,000th location in Asia, including its first in Vietnam.

There are almost 8,000 Subways in unusual locations. “The non-traditional is becoming traditional.”

Subway has achieved its rapid growth, in part, by opening outlets in non-traditional locations such as an automobile showroom in California, an appliance store in Brazil, a ferry terminal in Seattle, a riverboat in Germany, a zoo in Taiwan, a Goodwill store in South Carolina, a high school in Detroit and a church in Buffalo, New York.

“We’re continually looking at just about any opportunity for someone to buy a sandwich, wherever that might be. The closer we can get to the customer, the better.”

McDonald’s is still the leader when it comes to sales. The burger chain reported $24 billion in revenue last year.

Excerpted from WSJ,  Subway Runs Past McDonald’s Chain , March 8, 2011

This entry was posted on March 10, 2011 at 6:50 am and is filed under Mktg - Distribution, Retailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.