Subway Sandwich Combinations

5/11/19

Subway's sandwiches are really tasty and I have been eating them for a while (decades). I wanted to see if I could create some interesting sandwich combinations using probability. I call this my "Subway sandwich spawner".

I took the following things about Subway sandwiches into account. The number in parentheses is how many options are in each category

• size of sandwich (2)
• bread (7)
• meat type or none (12)
• cheese type or none (7)
• toasted or not (2)
• veggies or none (13)
• sauces or none (13)
• seasoning or none (5)

If you multiply out 2*7*12*7*2*13*13*5, you get 1,987,400 possible sandwiches.

One could also consider things like double meat, double cheese, or chips and beverages if you want to look at meals, as well as having more than 1 vegetable, or extra of a single vegetable. I only considered a sandwich having 1 or 0 vegetables. However, typically I believe people get much more than 1 vegetable. For example, I usually get at least lettuce, tomato, and onion as a base, and then add on more vegetables from there. By focusing only on 1 or 0 vegetables, I simplified this spreadsheet a lot. If you take those other considerations into account, the possible sandwiches numbers in the hundreds of millions if not a few billion.

Here are some random realizations from my spreadsheet:

footlong, Italian bread, roast beef, monterey cheese, untoasted, spinach, harissa sauce, salt
footlong, honey oat bread, meatball, monterey cheese, untoasted, guacamole, sriracha sauce, pepper
footlong, multigrain wheat bread, tuna, American cheese, untoasted, green peppers, mayonnaise sauce, salt and pepper
footlong, roasted garlic bread, cold cuts, cheddar cheese, toasted, tomatoes, mint mayonnaise sauce, Italian seasoning
6 inch, roasted garlic bread, Genoa salami, American cheese, toasted, lettuce, mustard sauce, salt
footlong, Italian bread, cold cuts, American cheese, toasted, red onions, teriyaki sauce, pepper
footlong, honey oat bread, turkey, cheddar cheese, toasted, black olives, honey mustard sauce, no extra seasoning
6 inch, Italian herbs and cheese bread, cold cuts, American cheese, untoasted, red onions, honey mustard sauce, pepper
footlong, Italian bread, roast beef, provolone cheese, toasted, avocado, no sauce, no extra seasoning

Please check out this spreadsheet to see how I created these random sandwiches.

Keep in mind that your particular Subway may have more or less of the items in the various categories. Also, Subway's available items, like any restaurant, undergo changes, so you'd need to update the spreadsheet accordingly. You could also, as I do, apply this sampling idea to other restaurants (and other areas from your life where you have choices in categories) to have some fun, add variety, and try new things. Additionally, if you want to weight certain items (say chicken or black olives) to appear more frequently than other choices, but still have your choices be random, this can be done as well.

Thanks for reading.