While enjoying some Flatbread Sammies at the King Farm Quiznos
last week, Kelly and I noticed something interesting. (Interesting to
us, at least, but keep in mind she is an English teacher and I am a
technical writer, so our concept of "interesting" includes things like
punctuation.) While we were discussing the Sammies sign in the window
(see cameraphone pic #1 below), Kelly pointed out that its spelling of
"Quiznos" did not have an apostrophe, whereas the storefront sign
(cameraphone pic #2)
did have an apostrophe.

We found this somewhat egregious, and started examining every
branded item in sight in hopes of making sense of the discrepancy.
Our inclination was to trust the actual storefront sign and write the
"Quiznos" aberration on the Sammies poster off as an unfortunate typo, but
lo and behold, the "Quiznos" spelling could also be found on our
napkins and cups.
Kelly makes her best "confused" face
In fact, the only other place we could find the with-apostrophe spelling was in this handmade sign in the window:
As you can imagine, all of this made us even more confused.
Obviously there was no way I could
not go home and Google
"Quiznos apostrophe" immediately. Information was hard to come by, and
for a while all I had to go on was an interesting but inconclusive
MetaFilter thread. Fortunately,
this Feb. 2003
Business Journal article sheds a little light on the issue. According to the article:
In December [2002], the company introduced a new interior scheme intended to appeal to a younger demographic. Additionally, the company dropped the apostrophe in its name and officially rebranded itself as Quiznos Sub.
Lange said such changes, along with updating the menu every two
years, are ways that she said prevents Quiznos from becoming stale.
I love that part of appealing to a younger demographic
is removing those un-hip punctuation marks.
Anyway, I guess the King Farm Quiznos is still using pre-December
2002 storefront signage, despite having integrated their new, hip,
apostrophe-less napkins, cups, and menus 5+ years ago. Since King Farm
is a relatively new development, I am guessing that the owner of this
particular franchise opened the restaurant sometime after 2000 and then
was all pissed off when he found out 1-2 years later that he was going
to need a whole new sign out front. This is just a theory, though.
The only thing I can say for sure is that from now on, I will be
checking every Quiznos I pass to see if their sign is in compliance
with the great Apostrophicide of 2002.
That's about it for my Quiznos investigation, but I did post a little bit of bonus material after the jump.
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