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First Subway® in Krasnoyarsk

Posted by Dima Sabanin March 1, 2006

First let me introduce myself. I’m Dmitry Sabanin, I live in Russia, Krasnoyarsk and I’m a senior Rails programmer at FutureTrack5.

You probably don’t know me, because I haven’t accomplished anything big or very important yet. However I’m the author of MuraveyWeb – a CMS framework based on Rails. We are also doing some very new things with Mockingboard. But enough of an introduction for now :)

This is my first blog post here and I’ve decided to blog about my first Subway® experience. So you can stop reading here if you were expecting some Rails coding tips or comments on new Mac Minis :)

First of all, it was quite a shock for me to hear that this food chain had opened up shop here in Krasnoyarsk!

We don’t have McDonalds or any other famous fast-foods chains here yet. We do have plenty of crappy places where they make hamburgers and sandwiches – but these taste like they are 2 years old.

So soon after I heard about Subway®, my brother Ilya (who happens to be Rails coder here at FutureTrack5 too) and I decided to go there for lunch today.

And I must say it was the most surprising lunch experience I’ve had in my short life!

First of all, a girl at the bar stunned us when she asked what would we like to put in the sandwich. Oh no, wait, I’m lying here… First she asked us to decide what length we would like the sandwich to be! :)

That was quite a shock!

I never even knew that there was so much to choose from when it comes to sandwiches. We were standing at the bar for like, 10 minutes, trying to decide what we would like inside this 30cm beast!

Finally, we ended up telling girl how much money we had (our budget was limited and we weren’t ready for Subway® prices :) , and asked her to decide what to put in the sandwich for us!

Soon after checkout there was second surprise. We got a free cookie and square card with bonuses for each second time we visit the place! And that was cool.

Okay, I’m probably sound boring to death so I’ll try to go to the final part. Hope you’re not asleep yet, if you’re reading this at all :)

Imagine my face when I was chatting with Dave on Campfire today, and he told me that he was eating a sandwich from Subway® for his lunch today too! He got a free cookie too!

Suddenly I realized that my visit to Subway® was more like visit to another country. I saw how the right business should be done – good service, free bonuses and most important, tasty food! And they serve pretty fast also.

There aren’t many places here in Russia where you experience such great customer service or that give you so much options to choose from.

I hope that this will change someday.

P.S. Any ideas how they manage to sell the same tasty cookies in different parts of the world? The cookie was tasted fresh, but I don’t think that they made it here in Krasnoyarsk. Or is it some chemistry magic?