- Subway Australia says it's mulling transporting ingredients by plane rather than by truck.
- Supply-chain workers are calling off sick with COVID-19, meaning some businesses can't get stock.
- A Subway exec told News.au.com using planes would be a "last resort."
Subway Australia says it could resort to transporting sandwich ingredients by plane, rather than by truck, if the supply chain crisis keep getting worse.
Like restaurants and retail chains in the US, Australian businesses are being hit by product shortages as staff across the supply chain call in sick with the coronavirus.
Scott Buckman, Subway's acting country director for Australia, told The Australian Financial Review that the sandwich chain was considering using planes to transport ingredients.
"We're keeping that open as a real option," Scott Buckman, Subway's acting country director for Australia, told The Australian Financial Review. "It's not an ideal solution, it's not something we have jumped to do yet, but it's a thing we are considering."
"If we find there is a supply issue in one state and excess supply in another state, a solution would be to get the excess on a plane and fly it over there to address that," Buckman said.
Buckman told News.au.com that Subway was considering air freight as a "last resort."
"It's not something we ultimately would like to do," he told the site. "We're very focused on our franchisees and making sure that we keep cost changes to a minimum."
Other companies chartered their own flights to deliver supplies amid chaos at ports during the pandemic, causing air freight charter prices to soar.
Buckman added that Subway was monitoring orders and stock allocations "really closely" and working to spread supplies evenly across the country.
"We're fairly confident we've got it mostly covered and that we're going to be able to continue to deliver to our restaurants and ultimately deliver to our customers," he said.
Buckman told the site that Subway was working to keep stores open, but that the chain wasn't sure how long the issues would last for.
KFC Australia has also been hit by product shortages as some delivery and chicken supplier staff isolate with the coronavirus, causing the chain to take some items off the menu.
Cases in Australia are surging amid the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, which studies suggest is more transmissible than previous variants like Delta. The country has reported almost 1.2 million confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic – and around two-thirds of these were reported within just the first two weeks of January 2022, per data from the country's department of health.
As well as limiting its access to supplies, rising coronavirus cases across Australia mean that more Subway workers themselves have been getting ill, causing some stores to cut their opening hours or close completely, News.au.com reported. In the US, airlines have canceled flights, transport providers have cut back on the number of subway services, and Starbucks has closed some dining rooms as more staff call in sick.