Angry Franchisees Want Subway To Yank Megan Rapinoe’s TV Ads: “Spending our money to make a political statement is completely and totally out of bounds”
A group of Subway franchisees are not happy with Megan Rapinoe’s TV ads for the restaurant chain and are pressuring the fast-food company to send her packing. Rapinoe has been appearing in ads for the company and members of the North American Association of Subway Franchisees have started to sound the alarm.
One franchisee wrote on a forum, “The ad should be pulled and done with, it gets tiring apologizing,” before posting a note from a customer that said:
“Boycott Subway until Subway fires the anti-American Megan Rapinoe, the creep who kneels for our beloved National Anthem.”
Subway doesn’t own any of its almost 22,000 locations. In more bad news for Rapinoe, reps from the NAASF told irate members they had already taken up with the company’s top management.
“Your NAASF Board has already communicated with Subway leadership the concerns voiced by NAASF membership,” the group’s executive director, Illya Berecz, told franchisees.
“I had a bunch of franchisees calling me on this today,” a lawyer who represents Subway franchisees said. “They are trying to get the ads pulled.”
“They probably wanted more splashy advertising to go along with more splashy foods,” said John Gordon of Pacific Management Consulting Group. “We are so politically divided in this country and Subway should have done more careful due diligence, without a doubt, before choosing Rapinoe.”
“If our soccer team, headed by a group of Leftist Maniacs, wasn’t woke, they would have won the Gold Medal instead of the Bronze,” Trump said in a statement.
“The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics instead of doing her job!”
From The New York Post:
One exasperated West Coast franchisee told The Post he believes the company’s ads should focus on the improved bread.
The franchisee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also suggested that Subway’s ad gurus focus on the chain’s mom-and-pop owners so Subway comes off as less corporate.
“Spending our money to make a political statement is completely and totally out of bounds,” an Arizona franchisee said on the NAASF blog about the corporate parent.
Another Midwest-based franchisee said Subway should have seen this coming before signing Rapinoe.
In July 2019, she took heat for allegedly stomping on the American flag. Weeks earlier, she created headlines when she said she was not going to the “f**king White House” if invited to visit President Trump.
Subway franchisees are fed up with Megan Rapinoe's TV ads https://t.co/yZNLXcyDnv pic.twitter.com/Gqd4ZSDd2Q
— New York Post (@nypost) August 6, 2021
"At Su-ubway…kneel fresh!" @SUBWAY https://t.co/wPdqPMkKbS
— Matthew Betley 🇺🇸 (@MatthewBetley) August 9, 2021