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Comment by rickspencer3 | Hacker News Reader

My experience living in France (now about 9 years out of date) is that they did like McDonalds their ("McDoe" as they said), but they LOVED Subway.

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There was some initial enthusiasm about their build-to-order approach to sandwiches (which is probably what you have witnessed), but it has faded over time and now it’s nothing special. It does have a reputation of making edible sandwiches, but not much more and not cheap.

[edit] oh yeah, their bread is terrible. It seems to be difficult for a foreign food company to understand how important decent bread is in France. McD got a ton of goodwill when they introduced baguette sandwiches.

As a Frenchman, I wonder where you got that perception. Perhaps you were there at the time it was novelty.

If you asked now Frenchmen who had experience with Subway, the majority of opinions would refer to it as « meh » or « pretty shit ». The so-called bread in particular has an especially grim reputation. But the rest of the ingredients also taste mediocre, especially compared to McDo.

McDonald's is such a part of the cultural landscape it might as well be French nowadays. It has much better staying power than any other fast food chain.

From the long lines at all of the Subway restaurants around Toulouse where I lived, and the fact that my friends in Lyon ate at Subway regularly and took me there often when I visited.

Subway in America also has terrible bread and it makes no sense at all. Even the smell of Subway baking bread almost makes me sick.

There are plenty of American sandwich places that have similar prices, and they all have better bread.

I've never heard anyone say they loved Subway. The only time I ever ate Subway was because I worked somewhere where there were few other options. After a few times, I started bringing in my food from home because it was so unpleasant. The bread is just terrible.

I tried it lately and the meat seemed unfresh and unseasoned but I've never had a complaint about the bread. I don't really get it.

When I was there, the locals (at least the young folk who dabbled in fast food) much preferred Quick, which was a local fast food competitor.

I never saw a single Subway in Grenoble, Paris, Tour or Lyon.

> the locals (at least the young folk who dabbled in fast food) much preferred Quick, which was a local fast food competitor.

Everyone knew Quick was far worth than McDonald's. It's just that they always had insane promotions for students. They were never really profitable and ended up being sold to Burger King (the French state owned part of them for a time through a serie of strange events).

> I never saw a single Subway in Grenoble, Paris, Tour or Lyon.

There are 36 Subway in Paris, 10 in Lyon, 3 in Tours and 2 in Grenoble.

But you are right that Subway is not really popular. McDonald's is where people go when they want to indulge for cheap. If you don't mind paying more, there are now better local burger chains in France large cities (Big Fernand notably) and I think Asian food remains generally more popular than American fast foods in Paris.

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