Jersey Mike's launches in UK: Can it compete with Subway for a slice of the sandwich market?

Jersey who? Jersey Mike’s — the American sandwich chain. It’s opening in London before a huge roll-out across the UK. Before we get to that, let’s consider its competitor, Subway.When was the last time you had a Subway sandwich? Hopefully some time ago. I’ve never really been convinced. Beyond the meatball marinara — generally okay — Subway sandwiches are just processed meat and refrigerated salad in supermarket-level bread. The corporation should never have changed its name from Pete’s Super Submarines for a start. Maybe the whole thing went awry when founder Fred DeLuca, who started out in Bridgeport, Connecticut, aged 17, with a $1,000 loan from a family friend (nuclear physicist Peter Buck), stepped down in 2015. It was probably years before.As for Jersey Mike’s, unless you’re clued up on the American sandwich market, you’re unlikely to be au fait with the sandwiches. The comparison with Subway is straightforward: both trade in Italian-style sandwiches, quickly made and affordable. Jersey Mike’s even has a similar origin story, though can trace its roots back even further, to 1956, nine years before DeLuca started out. Peter Cancro was 14 when he began working at an everyday sub shop in Point Pleasant, 128 miles down the coast in New Jersey, before he bought the business and turned it into Jersey Mike's, also aged 17. Peter Cancro at 17 years old.The East Coast chain is enormous in its own right, with more than 3,300 locations in the US and Canada. But it’s dwarfed by Subway, which has 37,000 locations around the world, having first expanded outside its homeland in 1984. Subway’s first shop outside the US? Bahrain. The company moved into the UK market in 1996, in Brighton. Both have been owned by private equity firms since 2024.It’s taken until now for Jersey Mike’s to expand beyond North America. Apparently now’s the time: there are plans to open 400 locations in the UK and Ireland and will start on Argyll Street in London, with the first shop scheduled to launch in the next few weeks. Is it any good? More to the point, is it better than Subway?Time will tell. “Across the pond”, there appears to be a widely held belief that Jersey Mike’s is superior. There have been some high-profile comparisons and test tastes, including one on a TV show called Good Mythical Morning during which two enthusiastic American presenters picked Jersey Mike’s over Subway. There are also a handful of celebrity fans, including Danny DeVito, while it was named America’s highest-rated fast-food chain for customer satisfaction in the 2026 American Customer Satisfaction Index. Some promise, then, but let’s not get carried away. I mean, look at Taco Bell, and Chick-fil-A. So many colourful, trumpeted American food imports are suboptimal. I should mention that an announcement from the Jersey Mike’s team in the UK today talked a big game about “quality” meats and cheeses (always pleases) being sliced to order and the fact bread is freshly baked each morning. There’s also a lot of talk about “Mike’s Way”, which, as far as I can tell, simply means ordering a sandwich with onions, lettuce and tomatoes. And something dubbed “the juice”, a very Italian-American, super Jersey Shore combination of red wine vinegar and olive oil. It’s splashed on sandwich fillings before the bread is folded. All of this means Jersey Mike’s is more expensive than Subway, by the way, though not by much. Shore thing. Anyway, I imagine this will either send people into a bit of an Instagram frenzy — a la Dave’s Hot Chicken — or slip away into relative obscurity, like Noel Edmonds.