Chicken Wings are a popular favorite among quite a few people, as chicken is a well-liked meat by almost everyone which allows for an extremely wide variety of flavors for everyone to enjoy and find one they love, whether they love a sweet sauce, a spicy sauce, or a tangy barbeque sauce.
As Chicken Wings are so beloved by all, there are quite a few food franchises which have tried their hand at Chicken Wings, whether it makes sense for them to have Chicken Wings or not. For example, KFC has sold Chicken Wings for all of its existence. Other franchises which do not make nearly as much sense, such as Taco Bell, have tried their metaphorical hand at selling Chicken Wings for a limited time.
One well-known franchise which seemed to take a massive step outside its traditional menu to sell Chicken Wings appears to be Subway. At the very end of December of 2019, a viral set of photos shocked the internet and announced to everyone that Subway was selling Chicken Wings. These photos left many wondering whether or not Subway was indeed selling Chicken Wings.
There is a good reason many were skeptical of Subway selling Chicken Wings, as a chicken shortage was currently happening at the end of 2019 into 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic creating supply chain difficulties which caused even Buffalo Wild Wings to have difficulties sourcing chicken wings during this time.
A second reason many people were suspicious of Subway selling Chicken Wings is due to the tested quality of some of its proteins. Subway’s Tuna was found not to contain tuna, while some of the various forms of chicken subway uses was found to be anywhere from 40% to 60% chicken, with roughly half of the protein being made up of other various proteins. This made many question why Subway, a franchise which notoriously sold boneless products, would suddenly start selling Chicken Wings when various chicken products being sold were not fully composed of chicken.
So, did Subway start selling Chicken Wings at the very end of 2019?
The answer is most likely no. It is extremely unlikely that Subway started selling Chicken Wings in December of 2019. There are a few reasons Subway most likely did not start selling Chicken Wings.
As mentioned previously, Subway does not sell any items which have bones in them at all, so it would be extremely unusual for the brand to suddenly introduce Chicken Wings. During the suspected time frame, there was a chicken shortage for restaurants and fast food franchises all over, making it a poor financial business decision for Subway to start selling a new chicken product during a chicken shortage during a pandemic which also caused many people to stop visiting restaurants.
There are two main reasons to believe Subway never actually started selling Chicken Wings. The first indicator that Subway never started selling Chicken Wings at the end of 2019 is the fact that there was no promotion for the Chicken Wings by any Subway social media account at any point in the time surrounding the debut of the Subway Chicken Wings photos. The second indicator that Subway never started selling Chicken Wings is that Chicken Wings, as a menu item, never made it to any of the online menus for anyone to order from. From the end of 2019, all the way to the end of 2022, Chicken Wings have never graced any of Subway’s online menus.
So if Subway never sold Chicken Wings, where did these photos come from?
There are two ways these photos most likely came about.
The first option behind the existence of these photos is that the photos themselves are actually real. Presuming the photos are real, the source of them would most likely be due to Subway product testing. Some franchises, Subway included, will test potential menu items at a very small number of its locations, allowing the brand to get a reliable sampling of what its consumers think about the potential menu item.
The second likely option is that someone has some very good photoshop skills with too much time on their hands and the desire to cause an uproar on the internet.