News

Subway names winners of global entrepreneur challenge

July 11, 2013

The five grand prize winners of the online Build Your Own Virtual Subway Global Challenge have come from around the world to visit the chain's headquarters in Milford, Conn., to receive potential job, career and networking opportunities with the brand.

To inspire young entrepreneurs, Subway, along with Young & Successful Media, launched the initiative, which ran from Jan. 29 through March 31. The Subway Challenge is a business simulation game that enables players to learn about business by building a virtual Subway restaurant and compete globally by driving customers into their "restaurants" through social media while also completing a series of challenges.

"We were particularly pleased with the young entrepreneurs we were introduced to by being part of the Global Challenge," said Don Fertman, chief development officer of Subway. "We have more than 400,000 team members throughout 102 countries. This is a wonderful chance for us to complement our current team and offer opportunities to a pool of five grand prize winners and 13 finalists, who are all very entrepreneurial minded people."

The initiative coincides with the release of an educational documentary, "Subway Restaurants: How a 17-year-old Built the #1 Restaurant Chain in the World through Franchising" by Young & Successful Media. A preview is available online at http://bit.ly/SubwayStory.

The five top winners include:

• Holger Staerz, 31, a PhD candidate from Vienna, Austria.
• Agratha Dinakaran, 24, from Bangalore, India.
• James Doyle, 23, from Wesley Chapel, Fla.
• Aline de Souza Rodrigues, 25, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Andreas Chiou, 49, from Glyfada, Greece.

Read more about online initiatives.