Judging A Sandwich By Its Cut

          Whether it was something I saw or read I can’t be certain, but a few weeks ago my memory was jogged about the strange v-cut that Subway formerly used to create the space for all of your sandwich fixings.
       
           To make the cut ‘sandwich artists’ made a steep angled cut into the bread and carved all around the loaf until the top popped off. Besides its unique shape my recollections of the cut and what it represented were rather akin to my feelings about my sixth birthday party: it was probably fine but truth be told I haven’t really thought about it for a while. Curious about when the shift to a straight cut occurred I indulged in a quick search for the date of the switch. The date was not easy to come by – maybe sometime in the late 90’s or early 2000’s to someone’s best guess – but in my search I was astonished to realize the bees’ nest that had been rattled when Subway changed this cut.

          Posts and opinions about the v-cut are plentiful and include conspiracies, anger over perceived personal offenses, resentment that subway would not cut their bread in a V even when asked (“That may mean that I am a petty, bitter little man…but at least I know how I like my sandwiches”), and my favorite title about “How Subway Went to Shit”. Reasons given by these impassioned sandwich patriots and their disciples as to why the cut was changed ranged from the shorter time it took to make only one cut, to the simplicity of making one cut (obviously not confident in the employee’s cutting prowess), to its utility in toasting the sub. Lacking the desire to throw my hat in I nonetheless could not find a satisfactory, or anything even approaching official, answer that explained the switch. While some of the other answers may have played a role, I think there’s a better explanation for why subway decided to depart from the V in favor of the standard cut: Subway needed their sandwiches to look like sandwiches.

     When you stroll through Barnes & Noble, Borders, or swipe through the digital library representation on your iPad or Kindle you expose yourself to tons of symbolic images meant to manifest the book content. Due to so much information overload in browsing through books, covers need to communicate the nature of the book to the potential reader. Quotes by well known authors speak to the book’s pedigree, as do things like bestseller lists or awards; but the best way to relate the nature of the book is to create a cover that is similar to other books in its genre. This is as remarkably true for the wispy colorful images of

gorgeous strong lovers that adorn all the books in the romance section as it is for the popular minimalist white background of many popular social psychology texts (perhaps call it The Tipping Point Effect).

          This effect is demonstrated throughout our society whenever we want something to be considered as part of a certain frame of reference. The clothes we wear identify us with the characteristics of a certain group, while any road sign that you see in red will cause you to do a double take because of the association of red with danger and stopping on the road. Having ‘the look’ has been demonstrated through numerous studies to be one of the most important factors in the elections of public officials. In one study respondents could correctly select the winner between two candidates with about 70 percent efficiency, showing that it’s not so much your fitness for office, but rather whether people think you look like someone who fit the frame of reference for an elected official.

          In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Subway sought to rebranditself as a healthy fast food chain. To accomplish this they had to create a frame of reference for their consumers by demonstrating brand parity with other fast food chains in taste and value, yet conclusively illustrate brand differentiations in quality and health. In 1997 they launched the 7 sandwiches under 6 grams of fat campaign, and in 2000 Men’s Health magazine penned a story about soon-to-be Subway spokesman Jared Fogle who lost 245 pounds in a year by eating Subway sandwiches. Accompanying this were shifts that included a wider fresh bread selection, and a new slogan inviting you to ‘Eat Fresh’.

          Subway needed to ditch the v-cut as a point of parity within the fresh sandwich shop frame of reference that stood in opposition to the other fast food retailers like McDonald’s. Therefore, if Subway was to be a specific type of brand they needed to look like others that were doing the same thing, and pay attention to social ideas surrounding what their products should look like. A sandwich with a v-cut is a sandwich in the sense of something being sandwiched between two pieces of bread, but it is not what consumers would traditionally call, much less make at home, a sandwich. Thus, like all the other books in the mystery section or the politician in the strong solid blue tie, Subway had to change the way they cut their sandwiches for the simple purpose of making it look like a sandwich. By cutting the sandwich straight across the product became a sandwich in form, allowing Subway to associate itself with all the positives sandwiches bring over traditional fast food, while avoiding the pitfalls of a uniquely Subway sandwich that could differentiate the brand from the intended frame of reference.

          Whether the sandwich ingredients look fresher with the side cut, the bread toasts better, or the reasoning I provided above, it seems that Subway has made many of the correct branding choices along their path to becoming the most numerous fast food chain in the world. Despite this though it will always be difficult to appease those who conclude that you have 'gone to shit'.

Deeper: For discussions on social proof, when we act based on a little bit of evidence that falls into line with how we and others have acted in the past, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Influence by Robert Cialdini or listen to this introductory video featuring Dan Ariely. This article in Psychology Today is a great summary of some of the recent findings in terms of how we view the way people look, especially in terms of their facial characteristics.