Subway Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Goodbye McDonalds… Hello Taco Bell, Subway, and Dunkin Donuts!

January 31, 2018 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

It feels like I get stuck in a pattern sometimes. I recently wrote Goodbye Google Finance, Hello Google Spreadsheets. The family passed around the plague for a couple of weeks. So I’m going to return back to that formula, because it works.

I have a history of writing about McDonalds. For years and years, they’ve been a great value. I recognize that it is unfortunate that the healthiest food (salads and grilled chicken sandwiches) are the most expensive. Nonetheless, if you were on the go, a single dollar (plus tax) could sustain you for quite a few hours. Here’s a brief history of what I’ve written about McDonalds over the years:

Back in 2006, you could use a Bank of America promotion to get 10-cent double cheeseburgers for 3 months!
In 2007, I defended McDonalds Double Cheeseburger as be more efficient than making your burgers. Another popular blogger went through a detailed exercise to say it wasn’t so.
In 2008, I wrote about McDonalds Eat-in Tax. This got very confusing for everyone, and I still don’t know what the truth is about whether McDonalds charged a separate tax for eating in the restaurant. I just know that on consecutive days, I was charged different prices and the receipt on the second day when I ate in had the difference which appeared to be clearly labeled.
In 2009, I wrote about McDonalds switching from the double cheeseburger to the McDouble on the Value Menu. They took away a slice of cheese and called it a McDouble. So if you weren’t paying attention and ordered a double cheeseburger, you paid a 29% premium for that extra slice of cheese. I called it sneaky, but credited McDonalds with good disclosure.
There seems to be a gap when not much changed. You could get a McDouble for a number of years for just a buck. Alas inflation, like Father Time always wins*. In 2013, I wrote that people should avoid McDonalds $2 egg. Essentially that was the price difference between Egg McMuffin with Sausage and the Sausage McMuffin. A wise blogger, Tight Fisted Miser chimed in that you could order a side of eggs separately. They were about $1.20 and you seemed to get twice as much egg.
In 2015, I wrote how to lose money at McDonalds. It compared making the silly choice of buying a QuarterPounder instead of a McDouble on the Value Menu.

As you can tell, I’ve been a fan of stretching my dollar when I go McDonalds. It may sound like I was a little obsessed, but it’s 6 articles in 11 years, so that’s not too bad, right?

Today, I think you can throw out most of those articles. The breakfast ones might be somewhat relevant, especially the eggs if they still honor that cheap price.

McDonalds went away from the Dollar Menu for awhile. They had various Pick 2 for $2 and Pick 2 for $5. I couldn’t make use of the Pick 2 for $5, but the Pick 2 for $2 of McDoubles could at least be shared with my wife.

Finally, it seems McDonalds has settled on their $1, $2, $3 Dollar Menu.

It seems like great marketing, but not a lot value for consumers.

For $1, you used to get a double cheeseburger. Now you can get a single cheeseburger. As we all know, the single cheeseburger is essentially bread, right? It’s 300 calories, and 8 less grams of protein from the McDouble, which makes it not very much of a meal. There’s a chicken sandwich, but there’s 40 empty calories from mayo. That brings it back down 310 calories.

For $2, you get a little more, but at that point you aren’t getting through for just a dollar. It doesn’t seem like much, especially if it’s only a sometime trip, but if becomes more of a regular thing, you are paying twice as much as you used to.

For the same reasons as the $2, menu, I don’t see a reason to dissect the $3 menu. There’s a triple cheeseburger, but shouldn’t that be less than $3 because I could get 3 of the $1 cheeseburgers and use the left over bread as Frisbees?

I understand that I’m rare to dissect McDonalds Dollar Menu like this. It’s good business for McDonalds and this will help improve their margins (as long as it doesn’t drive customers away). I don’t follow McDonalds stock, but maybe this is a good time to buy.

It would be easy to give McDonalds a pass and say, “Hey that’s just how inflation works.” However, it’s worth looking at a few other chains.

Hello Taco Bell!

Taco Bell’s $1 Menu is so large it feels like all its food is on it. The Beefy Frito Burrito is one such example. It’s not healthy. I don’t think anything with the word “Frito” in it pretends to be. However, it does have 440 calories. That qualifies as a meal for me at a price of a a single dollar.

While on the topic, I hear that the new nacho fries are good. I haven’t tried them, but they sound good. Again, this isn’t an article about healthy eating.

Hello Subway!

Subway seems to be having a hard time with its sales. Things got bad enough that they decided to bring back the $5 footlong while their franchises complain. I apologize to Subway franchise owners. I understand that you might not make big profits if everyone comes in and orders a $5 footlong without a drink or other “upsell” items.

That said, this is good news for me, the consumer! If I want something reasonably healthy (the health police are everywhere on such claims), I can pay $5 and often get 900 calories. That’s enough to two meals (I’m assuming a 450 calorie meal size, which is consistent with the calories in a McDonalds double cheeseburger, which was our baseline.)

So yes, it’s a little more money, but it feels more reasonable as a healthy upgrade.

Hello Dunkin Donuts!

I never thought I’d get Dunkin Donuts into a value article. I’m not a coffee drinker (the horrors!) and when we go there in the morning (my wife’s request), the bill always seems to come out to $12 because the breakfast sandwiches are so much. (The Wake-up Wrap is just an insult to food everywhere.)

However, there was a deal that caught my eye. It may just be my local franchise as I couldn’t find a lot of information online, but after 11AM they lower the price of the sandwiches to $2. That’s a decent price for a sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. I can see why Dunkin Donuts would want to do this. Their clients are focused on the morning coffee rush. I would expect business to be very poor after that.

It’s very tempting to do dinners at Dunkin Donuts especially since the only protein my kids will eat are their breakfast sandwiches for some quirky reason. They are small kids, so I can pick up dinner for the whole family for way under $10.

Random Fast Food Stuff

This isn’t part of the point of the article above, but I found these both interesting and worth reading:

* The exception to this is obviously Tom Brady. And yes, this qualifies for my obligatory Tom Brady mention in every article until at least the Super Bowl.

Introducing the Subway Footlong Index (SFI)

August 11, 2016 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

I was reading Retire By 40 a couple of days ago and Joe had a good article about not forgetting about inflation in retirement. After all, if you are going to “Retire by 40”, you’ve got to consider dealing with potentially 45 years (or more) of inflation. If you retire at age 65, you are looking at “only” 20 (or more years). (Yes, that’s me getting ‘mathy’ by subtracting 25.)

Inflation over 45 years is a significantly bigger deal than over 20 years.

In the article, Joe mentioned the rising prices of the lunch special at a local Chinese restaurant. In a few years, the $5.50 special became a $7 one.

That triggered a thought about my own mental inflation index, the price of Subway footlongs subs. You might remember that back in 2008, Subway launched a $5 footlong promotion. From everything I’ve read, it was fabulous successful, so successful that it became part of the regular menu.

Over time the number of subs that were available for $5 dwindled. Then they disappeared except for a monthly special. That disappeared and, in my area, has been replaced with $3 six-inch sub. The $5 footlong became $5.50. Now the cheapest footlong is $6.25.

The Subway Footlong Index (SFI) is a good way to thin slice overall inflation because Subway can’t reduce the product and still call it a footlong. (Though I supposed they could “thin slice” in a different way by making the meats thinner or smaller). It’s different than the price of a computer which always seems to be the same or a “half gallon” of ice cream that shrinks to 1.75 quarts.

Another useful thing about SFI is that most of you know what I’m referring to. Sure in San Francisco, Hawaii, or New York, the same subs might be $7, but people have probably traveled to an area with a Subway that has typical pricing.

Let’s look Subway prices and see if the SFI makes any sense with regard to traditional inflation indexes. I’m going to presume that you might have a $6 footlongs (I think I’ve still seen these). That means that prices have gone up around $1 (or $1.25 for me) in 8 years… from 2008-2016. We’ll call it between 20-25% over 8 years.

That’s around 2.7% per year compounded annually… which seems in line with other measures of inflation.

Maybe there really is something to this Subway Footlong Index? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Maximize Your Dollar at Subway

July 2, 2014 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

Yesterday, I explained how I maximize my money at Home Depot by buying discounted gift cards and pairing them with promotions, coupons, or even a military discount.

Today, I’m going to do a similar thing for a completely company: Subway.

I’m a huge fan of Subway, because it offers convenient, fast food that is reasonably healthy at a price that doesn’t damage my wallet. Some may say I’m weird, but I really like the taste too. While I am a strong believer in saving money with fast food value menus, I believe in eating healthy more. Plus they say moderation is the key, most of the time I’m making my own meals at home.

My weapon of choice at Subway is usually the $5 foot-long. It’s just the most amount of food for the dollar. Over time, I’ve noticed they’ve started phasing that away and slowly edging more subs to the $6 range. In some markets the $5 foot-long is already extinct. The $5 foot-long that I go for most often is the cold-cut combo loaded up with all the veggies, except black olives. (I don’t get the point of making it soggy by adding dressing or oil and the cold cuts have plenty of sodium in them without adding more).

There are a couple of ways I shave down the costs at Subway… and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ever do either of them.

Use a Rewards/Gift Card – If you register a gift card online you can start earning points for each purchase. Earn 75 points (typically $75 worth of food) and you get a free foot-long sub. So if you buy 15 subs, you get 1 free. That’s hardly a deal to blog home about, but it’s the equivalent of getting another $0.33 off a $5 foot-long sub. In the first couple of months I’ve been in this program, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of promotions for free points. This month’s promotion is double points if I use my card 3 or more times. Again, not exactly the best promotion, but I’m not going look that gift horse in the mouth.
Do the Survey on the Receipt for Free Food – Almost every fast food company offers you an entry into a contest for giving feedback. That’s fine, but it’s all or nothing. If you aren’t lucky that week, you’ve wasted your time. Subway is different. They’ll offer you a free cookie on your next visit for your feedback. Your time will never be wasted and feedback takes about 45 seconds. Oh, and it’s a good size cookie too. (So much for being healthy, right? Moderation is the key. A once a week cookie from Subway isn’t terrible.)

The catalyst for me writing this article is a mailing that I rece ived yesterday… $2 for a 6-inch meatball or cold-cut combo sub through Labor Day as part of their Summer of Savings promotion. They’ll probably still charge you $5 if you order a foot-long, just to tax you a dollar for being a poor mathematician.

Maybe you’ve already put two and two together, but getting to this month’s double point promotion is not particularly difficult using their $2 subs. Combine that with free cookie on each visit and you’ve got yourself a decent meal for not a lot a dough.

Subway franchises will probably hate me because I’ll be in an out there for $2 with a sub and cookie, 4 points towards a free sub. It wouldn’t be very good for their profit margins. That’s essentially equivalent to value menu pricing at the burger and taco places.