Jimmy John’s is making waves on social media for more than just its freaky fast delivery. The fast-food chain recently tore a page from Wendy’s book by participating in a little online trolling of rival sandwich chain Subway. After a lab test found no detectable tuna DNA in Subway’s tuna sandwiches, Jimmy John’s immediately launched the new “Real Tuna” campaign, taking a dig at its rival.
Launched on June 23, just two days after The New York Times released those jaw-dropping lab results and the same day the chain simply tweeted “tuna,” the Real Tuna campaign promotes the chain’s Club Tuna, which Jimmy John’s very specifically notes contains “real tuna 100% of the time.” While Jimmy John’s does not namedrop Subway, it takes more than just a few digs at the chain. The description on posters for the sub begins with, “When we say tuna, we mean real tuna” and goes on to say, “The Club Tuna is our delicious (and REAL) tuna salad sandwich.” Along with containing 100% real tuna, it boasts provolone cheese, lettuce, and tomato and is available on the customer’s choice of fresh-baked 8-inch or giant 16-inch French bread, thick-sliced wheat bread, or lettuce-wrapped Unwich.
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Jimmy John’s has continued the trolling on social media. Sharing the new campaign on Twitter, the chain wrote, “yes, our tuna is real. high quality is in our DNA.” One someone humorously replied that they didn’t “have to throw the shade like that,” Jimmy John’s simply said that they “did what i had to do.”
The Subway tuna saga began in January when two women from California filed a class-action lawsuit against Subway claiming that independent lab tests show the tuna is “made from anything but tuna,” but rather, the chain’s tuna is really a mix of “various concoctions that do not constitute tuna.” Not long after, Inside Edition ran its own lab test that confirmed the presence of tuna in Subway’s tuna sandwiches. However, the most recent study from the Times showed very different results.
According to the June 21 report, out of the “more than 60 inches worth of Subway tuna sandwiches” from three different Subway locations in Los Angeles, PCR tests performed at a commercial testing lab found “no amplifiable tuna DNA” present in the samples. The lab added that it “obtained no amplification products from the DNA,” leading to two conclusions – “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.” Subway has hit back at the report, maintaining that it “delivers 100 percent cooked tuna to its restaurants.”
