Entrepreneur Names Subway Number One Franchise

Today it was announced that Entrepreneur magazine’s has–yet again–recognized Subway Restaurants as the number one franchise opportunity among the magazine’s annual “Franchise 500” rankings.

“It feels like winning the Super Bowl, but this league is a lot more competitive,” says Fred DeLuca, president and co-founder of the Subway restaurant chain. “In football, they only have 32 teams and you have 500 teams in the Entrepreneur rankings. So it really gives us a good feeling for all the work we put in over the past year.”

The “Franchise 500” is considered by some to be the most comprehensive franchise rankings in the world. The annual feature considers many factors, including financial strength and stability, growth rate, the size of the system, and start-up costs.

In highlight Subway, Nichole L.Torres, of Entrepreneur magazine, writes, “DeLuca has led Subwaynot just to astronomical business success, but also to cultural-icon status. Today, businesses want to emulate Subway’s success. Franchise industry insiders don’t ponder who will be the next McDonald’s, but who will be the next Subway.”

Subway was ranked number 219 in Entrepreneur‘s first “Franchise 500” listing 26 years ago.

This year’s number one ranking comes at the end of a busy year for the Subwaychain. Fresh toasted subs have been introduced and will be in every restaurant in North America by the start of 2005. The chain recently surpassed the number of McDonald’s locations in Australia. In July, DeLuca and Subway weight loss spokesman Jared Fogle were in Washington, D.C., to announce an expanded partnership with the American Heart Association and to introduce the SubwayF.R.E.S.H. Steps Childhood Obesity Prevention initiative.