Subway Franchisee Success Story

Subway has firmly established the $5 footlongFrom BusinessWeek: Subway's $5 footlong, the brainchild of an obscure Miami franchisee, is the fast-food success story of the recession.

Stuart Frankel isn't what you'd call a power player in the world of franchising. Five years ago he owned two small Subway sandwich shop franchises at either end of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. After noticing that sales sagged on weekends, he came up with an idea: He would offer every footlong sandwich (the chain also sells 6-inch versions) on Saturday and Sunday for $5, about a buck less than the usual price.

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Subway Franchise To Overtake McDonald's

According to AdAge.com, Subway will become the world's largest fast food franchise - in that it will have more outlets than any of its competitors.  

The sandwich franchise is expected to overtake McDonald's in the next few months, with 31,771 stores currently in operation they are expecting to pass 31,800 this week. Subway is racing toward McDonald's 32,158 total restaurants, however the hamburger restaurant is still leading the way in terms of sales.

Franchises are Route to the American Dream for Immigrants

From The Wall Street Journal: Like many immigrants, Lyudmila Khononov turned to a franchise to fulfill her American dream.

When she was 10 years old, Mrs. Khononov's family left Odessa, Ukraine, for the U.S. in search of a better life. "There was a lot of discrimination against Jews," she recalls of their exodus 30 years ago.

As they began anew in this country, "we had nothing except a dream," Mrs. Khononov says. "But our parents told us we could be anything we wanted to be."

After marrying, Mrs. Khononov and her husband, Gregory, ran a diner in Queens, N.Y., for six years. But when it came time to think about expansion in 2001, they borrowed money from a bank and friends and turned to a franchise instead.

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