The King of $5 Subs

If you'll indulge me, I'm going to stick to my recent theme...food. Specifically sandwiches.

At some point in time, $5 became a benchmark for sandwiches. While I'm sure there were others before, the real power-player behind the movement was unquestionably Subway. Their $5 footlong campaign has been a gold medal for marketing and deliciousness. Soon after, the competition started falling in line. Quiznos dropped some of their more basic large subs to $5. Domino's rolled out their line of oven-baked sandwiches starting at $4.99. Some have tried to go lower, such as Sheetz with their $4 footlongs.

Each sandwich has its merits. And where you choose to do your business may be influenced by your love of bread, sauce, or some other ingredient. But that's not what I'm going to talk about today. If you are straight up hungry, and you want a $5 deli sub that will fill you up, and then some, then do I have the sandwich for you. And it's probably not where you would expect...Safeway.

I strolled into Safeway today and discovered this mammoth of a deal. On "Family Fridays," Safeway offers their massive All-American Sub Sandwich for $5. I took the term "family" to mean that it wasn't really intended for one person, but I was hungry, so I went for it. The nice lady behind the deli counter whipped one up fresh for me as I marveled in the sheer size of this thing. I couldn't wait to get it home and run some measurements before devouring it.

The sub is roughly the size of a small child. Unofficially, I measured her to be 15 inches long, and a ludicrous 5.75 inches wide at the mid-point. She weighed in at a whopping 2.6 pounds. This was estimated by me stepping on the bathroom scale, stepping off, and then stepping on again holding the sandwich.

Those who know me best know I can eat with the best of them. But even this thing was too much for my lunch, as what remains is now wrapped up in the fridge and will be revisited at dinner.

In terms of taste and quality, I really was quite pleased. Everything is made right back behind the deli counter, so it was all very fresh. For me, the bread makes or breaks the sub, and this bread was quite delicious. Looking at Safeway's website, it appears this might unfortunately be a 1-day thing. Well I hope they bring it back soon...