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Subway Pizza. Yum or Dumb?

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In 2005, Subway began using speed ovens to toast sandwiches. In June of 2007, Subway is set to use those speed ovens to flash-bake deep dish personal pizzas in 13,000 U.S. locations. Stores will use pre-baked pizzas and customers will be able to top their pizza with any of Subway’s sandwich ingredients.

I know what you are thinking … what’s a sandwich shop doing baking personal pizzas? You are also thinking … doesn’t Subway position itself as healthy fast food? Lots of questions.

But Subway has been answering these questions by field testing the personal pizza concept in select markets. It must have passed store-level operational feasibility tests and sales tests for Subway to roll-out pizzas nationwide. According to a Brandweek article, one of the NYC test stores sells about 25 personal pizzas a day.

Hmm…

I’m not sold on Subway doing pizzas—smacks of being all things to all people to me. But I’m not opposed to Subway doing pizzas.

It would feel less like a desperate and unfocused marketing ploy if they used their fresh-baked breads instead of using pizza dough. Subway could remain truer to its core sandwich roots if it used its bread to bake pizzas. Not sure about the myriad operational and product implications though. On paper, this sounds like a smarter idea than to use pizza dough.

Reckon we’ll have to see if Subway doing deep dish style pizza is yum or dumb. (My money is on “dumb.”)