To date, the Subway brand prides itself as one of the biggest sandwich
chain located in more than 44,000 places all over the world (“The History of
Subway,” n.d).
The current queue system of Subway outlets in Singapore focuses on a
single- channel/single station queue system that can be further enhanced. A
survey conducted by our team shows that out of 89 respondents, 53.93% of them
are not willing to stand in line for more than six minutes. Customers are more likely to be deterred by long
waiting lines, according to another survey in figure 1 (“Britons not willing to queue,” 2012). 59% of customers would rather choose the option
of not queuing up at the store. Thus, these factors may cause Subway’s
customers to look for food establishments nearby with shorter queue instead.
Figure 1. Survey of willingness to queue by (“Britons not willing to queue,” 2012)
One way to reduce the number of customers waiting in line is to adopt
the use of mobile technology, and companies such as Starbucks and Pizza hut are
successful examples of how using mobile technology can enhance the overall
experience for their customers. Taylor (2016)
states that Starbucks and Pizza hut are currently adopting the use of mobile
technology to allow customers to make orders. She also states that in the
current F&B context, many fast-food chains are looking in incorporating
mobile ordering for customers. It is also stated in the article that Starbuck’s
mobile application provides an ordering and reward program which attracts 12
million members up to date.
In addition, the number of F&B stores in Singapore that utilize
digital technology such as self-ordering kiosks are on the rise which aids to
tackle the issues for higher rise in cost for labour and low supply of manpower
(Poh ,2015). She also states that Singapore McDonald’s self-service kiosks also
aims to minimize long queues and to ensure the customers having a better dining
experience. According to Poh (2015), Ms Carolyn Khui, director of e-commerce
and customer relations of McDonald’s said “With the use of
the digital technologies, the customers are now empowered to make their own
orders, it improves accuracies for the customers, and at the same time, it
actually cuts the queues you see at most of our counters.”
Therefore, it is clear that the number of fast food restaurants which implement
the use of mobile application to order is constantly increasing. This further demonstrate
that it is an effective approach which improves overall dining experience for
customers. As such, it is beneficial for Subway to adopt the use of mobile
application to stay competitive, and to leverage on the benefits of mobile technology
to improve its customer’s overall dining experience at Subway.
