Subway background 地铁背景
Subway is a fast food restaurant that mainly sells submarine sandwiches to its customers as its core meal. This restaurant was started in 1965 in Connecticut by Fred DeLuca with an initial capital of $1,000, which was borrowed his friend, Peter Buck (Subway, 2018). Initially, the restaurant was called Peter’s Super Submarines but changed its name to Subway, which remains to date. By 1974, Subway had opened 16 branches in Connecticut and has since expanded to cover not only the United States but also other parts across the globe. According to Subway, the restaurant currently has approximately 44,000 branches located in 112 countries (Bhattarai, 2018). One of the countries in which Subway has established its operations is India. An analysis of its branches indicates that this restaurant has established 639 restaurants in this country (Subway, 2018). Nonetheless, despite its extensive growth into a worldwide fast food brand, Subway still promotes its core values among its branches. These values include exceptional service to its customers, high quality menu items at affordable prices, and low cost operation and continuous improvement (Subway, 2018). In addition, this fast food restaurant uses a consistent brand image in all its branches across the globe. Such consistency is a critical factor that could help Subway formulate and implement policies to promote environmental sustainability in India’s fast food industry, thus creating a foundation for environmental protection.
赛百味是一家快餐店，主要向顾客出售潜艇三明治作为其核心餐。这家餐厅由弗雷德·德鲁卡于1965年在康涅狄格州创办，初始资本为1000美元，是从他的朋友彼得·巴克（Peter Buck，Subway，2018）那里借来的。最初，这家餐厅被称为彼得的超级潜艇，但后来改名为地铁，至今仍在营业。到1974年，赛百味已经在康涅狄格州开设了16家分支机构，此后，它不仅扩展到了美国，还扩展到了全球其他地区。据Subway称，该餐厅目前在112个拥有约44000家分店（Bhattarai，2018）。印度是地铁运营的之一。对其分支机构的分析表明，该餐厅已在该国建立了639家餐厅（Subway，2018）。尽管如此，尽管Subway已广泛成长为一个全球快餐品牌，但它仍在其分支机构中推广其核心价值观。这些价值包括为客户提供的卓越服务、价格合理的高质量菜单项、低成本运营和持续改进（Subway，2018）。此外，这家快餐店在其全球所有分店都使用了一致的品牌形象。这种一致性是一个关键因素，可以帮助地铁制定和实施政策，以促进印度快餐业的环境可持续性，从而为环境保护奠定了基础。
Challenges Subway faces in India 印度地铁面临的挑战
In to gain insights on whether Subway can have meaningful impact on environmental sustainability in India’s fast food industry, there is a need to evaluate some of the major challenges that this restaurant faces on this market. To begin with, one of the challenges that Subway faces in India is founded on the fact that most institutions in this country are still at a development stage and as such, they have a strong sense of bureaucracy, which contributes to delay in approval of licenses and investment proposals among others (Budhwar & Varma, 2010). Speaking from this perspective, despite the fact that Subways has already established its operations in India, it can only effectively operate only under what the laws allows it to do. This implies that whereas Subway may seek to introduce policies and proposals that promote environmental sustainability in the fast food industry in India, their approval is likely to take, thus delaying their implementation to help promote sustainability. For example, as a restaurant, Subway is expected to adhere to the regulations of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to ensure food safety (Shukla, Shankar & Singh, 2014).
为了深入了解地铁能否对印度快餐业的环境可持续性产生重大影响，需要评估这家餐厅在这一市场上面临的一些主要挑战。首先，地铁在印度面临的挑战之一是，该国的大多数机构仍处于发展阶段，因此，他们有强烈的官僚主义意识，这导致许可证和投资提案的批准延迟（Budhwar&Varma，2010）。从这个角度讲，尽管地铁已经在印度建立了运营，但它只有在法律允许的情况下才能有效运营。这意味着，虽然Subway可能会寻求在印度快餐行业引入促进环境可持续性的政策和建议，但他们的批准可能会被采纳，从而推迟其实施，以帮助促进可持续性。例如，作为一家餐厅，Subway预计将遵守印度食品安全和标准管理局（FSSAI）的规定，以确保食品安全（Shukla，Shankar&Singh，2014）。