Subway and its challenges going global
In APA Style
Alesha Mellen
TUI University
Subway and its challenges going global
Subway has been a successful American company for over 40 years. It also celebrates success in many global markets. Subway has been offering international franchises since 1984. Frederick A. DeLuca, co-founder and president of Doctor’s Associates Inc., the franchisor of the Subway brand says that “Our international development is really starting to take of quite nicely.” (2005) Subway plans to focus its international expansion strategy on “high potential” areas. (2005) Even though expansion of Subway franchises internationally is growing at a healthy pace it still faces struggles in various countries due to cultural differences.
Subway opted to enter the Indian market by selling franchises to Indian brothers, Gurpreet and Manpreet Gulri. With their assistance in finding franchises and assisting in opening new stores across India the Subway brand has begun to grow. The Gulris run four Subway stores in Delhi and have signed up 35 Subway franchise locations across India. There were a number of challenges from the start for the expansion of Subway into India. In order to begin opening Subway stores in India, government approval was needed. It took two years to get the proper approval for opening stores throughout India.
In addition to the process of attaining proper approval to open stores, other challenges arose while trying to expand throughout India. Attaining supplies and ingredients such as flour proved difficult. Due to the quality of the flour in India the bread was not up to Subway brand standards. Another challenge in the India culture is that India is not a “bread-eating community”. (2006) The Gulri’s educate each customer about the quality of the Subway products. Knowing the culture contains many vegetarian consumers the Gulri’s created five meatless sandwiches (2006). India was not the only country...