Subway Goes Vegan? World's Largest Restaurant Chain Follows Its Market

The world's largest restaurant chain as measured by number of stores is going vegan.

Not totally - as you could probably guess - but making the commitment to offer vegan fare - and advertising it broadly suggests that the market opportunity is becoming compelling.

There are probably two aspects to the strategy. The first is that as the world's largest chain, finding new market segments to propel the company's growth requires the identification of new market segments to tap. The other aspect is that by identifying the company with the vegan movement, they earn some cred for being forward thinking, young and compassionate; attributes valued by their current base. This is not to imply that the company does not embrace veganism's moral imperative, that was implicit in agreeing with the suggestion that they take this step from customers and associated advocates. But this is a business, first and foremost, so the fact that they are willing to invest in this new initiative is a useful insight about trends in what people are choosing to eat - and why. JL

The Huffington Post reports:

Subway is already the world's largest restaurant chain. Now, they're working on appealing to a whole new kind of consumer: the vegan.
Animal advocacy organization, Compassion Over Killing, recently convinced Subway locations in Canada to sell a "Totally Vegged" vegan patty. Now, that effort has extended to select DC, Maryland and Virginia locations, via COK's "We Love Subway" campaign.

Until now, vegan Subway customers had been confined to the "Veggie Delight" sandwich: basically a pile of vegetables on one of their all-vegan breads, with condiments. This week, eight Beltway locations will roll out three new all-vegan sandwiches: Sweet Riblet, Malibu Greek and Italian Black Bean, giving the vegan Subway consumers of the world some protein on their subs.