Subway, the quick-service restaurant (QSR) sandwich chain with nearly 40,000 restaurants worldwide, is investing in expanding sales occasions beyond individual meals.
The company announced Tuesday (May 1) that it has redesigned its catering program to be easier to use in addition to launching its offerings on corporate food solutions provider ezCater’s marketplace.
“Over the last year, we’ve continued to see an increased demand for pickup and delivery orders overall, alongside larger catering orders spurred by a return to in-office operations and increased gatherings,” Trevor Haynes, president of Subway North America, said in a statement. “As demand for catering continues to grow, Subway is the ideal choice with refreshed options … that travel well, are easy to serve and accessible from virtually anywhere.”
The brand added “Easy Order” options with pre-selected offerings, enabled fulfillment via delivery or pickup and made updates to its packaging. Jenn Saunders-Haynes, director of catering at Subway, said in a statement that these changes “reflect a wealth of research” and that they improve the experience by offering a more intuitive ordering experience and by cutting down on wait times.
The move comes as restaurants seek opportunities to expand commerce occasions, not only meeting consumers’ food-at-home needs with digital ordering but also launching at-home meal kit subscriptions and boosting off-hours offerings such as breakfast items and snack selections.
Catering has been slower to get the digital treatment than other categories of food commerce. In an October interview with PYMNTS, Brian LeVee, vice president of product at restaurant marketing and commerce platform BentoBox, explained that tech-enabled upgrades have transformed individual on-demand restaurant ordering far more quickly than catering and other orders placed in advance.
“We spoke with a large number of restaurants that were offering catering and other types of preorders … and we found that they all had similar problems,” he said. “There weren’t many tools available in this space for these types of catering and other types of preorders — the restaurants were resorting to taking orders over the phone [or] through inquiry forms on their website … We saw those deficiencies were particularly magnified by COVID-related issues and staffing shortages.”
Read more: As Takeout and Delivery Soar, Catering Businesses Have Been Left Behind in the Digital Shift
Noting this issue, restaurants, technology providers and investors have been making moves to develop more frictionless digital catering experiences. For instance, in the fall, Instacart announced the acquisition of catering software company FoodStorm. In December, ezCater announced a $100 million Series D-2 funding round bringing its total funding to $425 million.
Related news: Corporate Food Solutions Startup ezCater Raises $100M
Instacart Acquires Catering Software Company in Push to Compete With Restaurant Aggregators
Restaurant brands, for their part, are especially interested in offering catering services and other purpose-built programs for corporate meals, a lucrative category that has transformed dramatically since March 2020, with many more employees continuing to work from home while others return to the office on a hybrid or full-time basis. In March, it was reported that health-focused fast-casual chain Sweetgreen was bringing back its Outpost program, through which the brand delivers to pick up points in office buildings, and in April, Outback Steakhouse parent company Bloomin’ Brands announced that the steakhouse chain has launched a catering business at nearly 500 of its United States locations.
See also: Sweetgreen Revives Office Delivery Program as Consumers Return to In-Person Work
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