Subway Bigger than McDonalds

I have just been flicking through Australia’s “The Australian” newspaper, which is in itself a challenge because The Australian is still printed on actual broadsheet size paper. As far as I know it is the only remaining Australian paper printed on broadsheet—but I am no expert on newspapers in Australia so I am probably wrong about this.

In a way this sort of makes it more exciting reading The Australian because there was a time when all papers, or most papers anyway, were printed on broadsheet. You sort of get the atmosphere that you are reading a “real” serious newspaper.

I remember when I used to fly—I hate flying now, with a passion—I was very impressed by those people on the plane (typically businessmen) who could handle the The Australian within the confines of a cramped airline seat. They could deftly folder the paper in double-halves in order to read the ‘quarter’ they wanted to read without crinkling the paper, stuffing up the pages, or hitting the person in the seat next to them in the face. Trust me. Serious skill and confidence is required to perform this manoeuvre.

I often thought there should perhaps be a course you could go to in order to find out how to do this. If there was I would have paid my money and gone along.

It is even tricky reading The Australian on a relatively smallish round table in a motel unit in Collie. The open broadsheet is so large it hangs over both edges of the table. It so large that the air-conditioned on the wall keeps wanting to lift the page you are reading off the table. There is certainly no room on the table for both the open broadsheet paper and a notebook computer.

Anyway … back on topic … in The Australian I am reading there is an article headed “Meet the world’s richest sandwich hand” which is about the Subway sandwich food chain. The article is mostly about the founder of Subway; one Fred DeLuca. It seems Fred started off dreaming of becoming a doctor but at 17 he got into subway sandwiches instead—and the rest is history.

But the core of this story is that Fred, now 46, and he never became a doctor, has 33,749 Subway stores in 95 countries around the world. This is more than McDonalds who have a paltry 32,737 stores worldwide. Fred has over a 1,000 more Subway stores around the world than McDonalds’ stores. Who would have thought?

There is both a Subway and a McDonalds store in Collie.