Subway is already the world's largest fast food chain, overtaking McDonald's in 2010, but with its nearly 39,500 restaurants in 102 countries, the franchise is still not satisfied. It's looking to have 100,000 stores by 2030, with 10,000 of those opening by 2017.
The sandwich company has reportedly added 11,000 franchise sites to its portfolio in the last five years and there's no sign of a slow down, Bloomberberg Businessweek reports.
Don Fertman, chief development officer at Subway, said "We have a real goal of getting to 50,000 stores by 2017. And we have a goal of - not a goal, but what we call a possibility - we have a chart that shows the possibility of us getting to 100,000 stores by 2030."
"About half of Subway's roughly 200,000 franchise inquiries each year come from North America, but the company sees most of the growth opportunity overseas. [Don] Fertman [Subway's chief development officer] expressed particular excitement about sub-Saharan Africa amid ongoing growth in South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia; Subway shops in Kenya will open soon. There are still some potential U.S. targets, he says, namely in Philadelphia, New York City's outer boroughs, and Boston," the report notes.
However, despite being the world's largest fast food chain, Subway doesn't crack the top 50 most valuable brands for 2013. McDonald's and Starbucks both rank higher in the fast food category.
"Someday someone is going to have 100,000 stores," Fertman says. "Who will it be? Maybe it will be us."
