These days, one can score a decent meal at your nearest Subway outlet for around $6, but that’s not to say you can’t get more bang for your buck when ordering your favourite sandwiches.

There’s no official cheatsheet when it comes to dining at Subway, but some former employees have exclusive insider hacks to share.

A Twitter thread started by a former Subway employee, @hajaarudin, revealed that the solution to a soggy sub was simply to request for your buns to be triple toasted.

The Malaysian employee swears by its taste and crunchiness, promising that the sub will retain its crunch factor regardless if it’s kept cold, or slathered in sauce. Though if you’re a multigrain fan, you might be disappointed to know that only the Hearty Italian loaf is suitable for double or triple toasting. The other breads will just turn soft, she says.

Another way to keep your sandwich dry is to have your dressing packed on the side instead.

But a crunchy sub is just the tip of the iceberg, so we dug a little deeper and probed some other former employees to see what other hacks they had to share.

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Spicing up the sub

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According to another Twitter user @aizatakrm, one of the best ways to instantly upgrade your sub is by requesting to have onions placed on top of the cheese with a sprinkle of pepper before it goes into the oven. That way, you’d get a peppery melty sandwich with slightly caramelised onions.

Similarly, you can request for your eggs to be seasoned before it’s placed on the bun, another employee shared with us. The eggs on their breakfast menu are, after all, prepared to order.

As an alternative to the crunchy sub hack earlier, the same employee revealed that it’s possible to request for only the meat and cheese to be heated, allowing you to enjoy the pillowy soft buns without sacrificing the warm contents. It might be a little extra work, she added, but she does it whenever she has a sore throat.

While this tip isn’t so much of a hack, she also shares that when choosing your vegetables, you can just tell the sandwich artist you want all the “fresh” — lettuce, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.

It doesn’t cost extra to add more vegetables too, so why not maximise your dollar?

Also a former sandwich artist here, if you can, request to put the onions and black pepper on top of the cheese BEFORE toasting. Makes it 10x better https://t.co/BN52G472T7

— Aizat Akram (@aizatakrm) September 23, 2020

Serving it up

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The 6-inch is, essentially, a footlong cut into two, but it turns out you can request to have it cut in quarters or smaller pieces to make sharing among friends easier. Unfortunately, it also makes it easier for the ingredients to fall out as you’re eating it.

To remove the hassle that comes with falling ingredients and dripping sauces, an employee recommends eating the sub horizontally instead, as you would with a cob of corn.

“My sister does that so the sauce won’t flow out of her sandwich. It’s damn funny but it works,” she laughs.

Don’t just take our word for it. The next time you head down to Subway, why not give one of these tips a try? Let us know what you think, or better yet, share with us your best hacks.

Rainer Cheung/Asia One