Putting Subway’s restaurant closures into context

Subway has closed 7,600 restaurants since 2015. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.

Twelve years ago, Subway cofounder Fred DeLuca said in multiple interviews that his company was a few years from 50,000 global locations. He told Bloomberg that the sandwich giant has “as good a shot as anybody” to reach 100,000 global locations.

Subway would not get there. It reached about 44,000 by 2015, the year of DeLuca’s death from cancer, including 27,102 restaurants in the U.S.

It has been declining ever since, particularly domestically. By the end of last year, it had closed 7,601 locations domestically, or 28% of the chain’s once-formidable unit count. Unless Starbucks’ 2025 becomes a longer-term decline of its own, the coffee shop giant should at some point over the next few years overtake Subway as the country’s largest chain by locations.

We do not believe location count on its own is a good representation for the size of a restaurant chain, which is why organizations like Technomic typically use system sales. Much like Subway’s ultrafast unit count expansion made the chain appear bigger than it was, its decline is not quite as extensive as it appears. It takes about eight Subway locations to match the volume of one McDonald’s location. 

But it’s also worth putting that decline into context: Subway has closed more absolute locations than any restaurant chain in U.S. history and it’s not particularly close. Only Quiznos, which has closed 4,500 locations—though a far higher percentage of its total unit count than Subway—even comes close.

(Subway has closed more restaurants this year, according to numerous franchisees, which is why we now say about 8,000 restaurants have shut down. But for this piece we’ll stick with the 2024 numbers.)

Here are the 10 largest U.S. chains by domestic restaurant count in 2024, according to Technomic, with Subway’s unit closures in there for effect. Closed Subway units would be the country’s sixth largest restaurant chain, just behind Taco Bell and ahead of Domino’s. 

Subway, in other words, has closed more locations than is currently operated by all but the five largest restaurant chains by restaurant count. 

It has closed more locations than is operated by the country’s largest pizza chain, its largest casual-dining chain and any of its sandwich competitors, 100% of the country’s chicken and Asian chains and pretty much the entire universe of drive-thru beverage brands.

The entire family-dining sector only has about 10,000 U.S. locations, or just about 2,500 more than the number Subway closed.

It takes a lot for a restaurant brand that gets that big to close that many locations that quickly. 

We’ve covered this topic ad nauseum on this website. But the seeds for the decline were planted well before DeLuca made his 100,000-unit goal public, featuring an open-at-all-costs mandate, poor oversight of openings and a mistaken belief that consumers will eat that many sandwiches. 

All that was before a long series of setbacks and poor decisions, which we noted Tuesday on X. 

Let me explain Subway for a second. This is a brand that very, very aggressively sold investors on the idea that it could place a location anywhere. At its peak it operated like 27k+ locations. It had locations in community centers, churches and even a crane at the World Trade… pic.twitter.com/buW7noFTmz

— Jonathan Maze (@jonathanmaze) December 2, 2025

Subway is now owned by the private-equity firm Roark Capital and has a new CEO in former Driven Brands chief executive Jonathan Fitzpatrick.

By the time Subway got to 27,000 restaurants, it should have been theoretically bulletproof, or “too big to fail,” because it has the marketing power to keep going. Instead, too many locations, too weak unit volumes, too many years spent with weak or no leadership and various other problems all contributed to this epic decline.

Franchisees closed each of those stores, and most of Subway’s operators are small-scale owners who made investments they’d hoped could be used as a retirement nest egg or something they could pass onto their heirs. Many are walking away with nothing. 

If you want to know why many franchisees will push back on so many issues like remodels or discounts or a new loyalty program, this is why. 

Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants.

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