Subway was hit with a class-action lawsuit on Monday that claims the chain’s advertisements “materially overstate” the amount of meat and cheese in its sandwiches.
The lawsuit, on behalf of the Queens resident Anna Tollison, asks justices in the US district court for the eastern district of New York to certify the claim as a class action.
Tollison claims she purchased a steak and cheese sandwich from a Subway location in New York in August for $7.61 and then realized that the chain’s ads showed a sandwich containing at least 200% more meat than she and other consumers would ultimately receive.
The lawsuit claims the photographs of sandwiches used in Subway’s marketing falsely advertise how much meat the steak and cheese sandwich contains.
Subway, with 37,000 locations in the US, was purchased by the Atlanta-based private equity firm Roark Capital in April.
The lawsuit claims Subway, best known for its foot-long sandwiches, engages in similar tactics for “many other sandwiches”, including its cheesy garlic steak.
The advertisements, the lawsuit states, “are unfair and financially damaging to consumers as they are receiving a product that is materially lower in value than what is being represented”.
It adds that this is deeply concerning because of inflation and high food prices, and lower-income Subway customers are struggling financially.
But similar lawsuits brought by the same law firm against McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell were dismissed just last year. A similar lawsuit against Burger King is pending in federal court in Miami.
Subway was also hit with a class-action lawsuit claiming that its foot-long sandwiches were less than a foot long. In 2017, a judge threw the case out saying it sought “only worthless benefits for the class and yields only fees for class counsel is no better than a racket and should be dismissed out of hand”.
A year earlier, a Wisconsin federal judge approved a settlement requiring Subway to adopt quality control measures that, he said, were consistent with “the realities of baking bread” so that a 6 or 12in sandwich came out at that length.
Several years ago, a court in the Republic of Ireland ruled that the bread served at Subway could not in fact be defined as bread because of its high sugar content.
• The subheading of this article was amended on 30 October 2024. An earlier version said Anna Tollison claims the sandwich she received contained “200% less” meat than advertised; as the article correctly reports, she claims the advertised item shows “200% more”, which would equate to receiving about 67% less.
