International News: Subway to Double C-store Hot Food Overseas

LONDON -- Subway could double the number of its franchised food-to-go operations in convenience stores and forecourt shops in the UK and Ireland over the next two years, reports Independent Retail News.

The takeaway sandwich and hot-food operation has 1,500 of its own stores, but it has more recently looked at developing partnerships with independent retailers and currently has a little more than 100 outlets open or in development in the convenience store market.

"I can see it going up to a couple of hundred in the U.K. and Ireland by the end of 2012," Paul Heyes, Subway's development manager, told Independent Retail News.

He said there was greater potential to develop partnerships with U.K. c-store retailers, rather than on garage forecourts, due mainly to the size of the premises needed for the operation.

Nick Fraser, development manager at the Fraser Group, said the company has a Subway franchise at Brize Norton, one of its five Spar stores, and sales are currently running at double the original target.

"We've never been able to make money out of it [hot food] because it didn't have the branded factor," he said. "Now it's branded, it's become a destination. It will have easily paid for itself within the first year of operation."