SUBWAY CASE STUDY

Specialist in hot and cold submarine sandwiches and salads, the SUBWAY® chain has experienced significant growth in recent years as a "healthy alternative" to other QSR’s (Quick Service Restaurants). Subway® UK wanted a programme to reward their Sandwich Artists™ for service excellence which was monitored by a ‘mystery shopping programme’ already in place.

The Challenges
The franchise structure of Subway® meant that we had no top level employee data to work from even the number of staff employed across the network was not available.

What we did…..
We spoke to a cross section of individual franchisees, store managers and the incumbent mystery shopping organisation to establish key statistics within the network. From the data we collected we made projections based on achievement of mystery shopping criteria, seasonal trends, network growth and store level buy-in.

We created Subrewards™, a completely bespoke scheme for winning staff members. All staff at a successful store receive a scratchcard from us with a chance to win prizes ranging from £5 vouchers and CD albums to Virgin Experiences and New York Shopping Trips! The staff can claim their rewards via the website, text or by phone…it’s as easy as that! We completely manage the scheme in full including a completely bespoke text system, web-site and phone line.

• 461% Rise in number of stores achieving the rewards criteria nationally
• 676% Rise regionally
• 36,964 Scratch cards issued to staff
• 12,427 Total winners!

The programme began to grow in momentum as more and more of the managers took part. Projections made at the beginning of the year were extremely accurate resulting in over 36,000 transactions.

Subway senior management had this to say...

"There was been a clear upward trend in the level of achieving stores above and beyond the growth rate of the franchise network and the average mystery shopping score has risen from 86.2% at the beginning of the rewards programme to a current average of 96.7%. "

"The unique on-line scratch card is a real hit, both satisfying and appealing. The results speak for themselves and we have seen a marked improvement in mystery shop scores since the scheme was implemented. "

Store managers had this to say…

‘The staff were already motivated by the mystery shops; they liked to receive a good score! Now there is something in it for them individually it has made it even more of an incentive for them to do well.‘

'All staff and management here are pleased that good work is not just being noticed, it is being rewarded!‘

'Experiences are fantastic, a store in the same area had two experience winners and everyone at my store was discussing it! I have a feeling the competitive element will push my store to work even harder next time!!‘

‘The entire scheme is fantastic and the sctratchcards on the website are really cool!’