What Publix Says About Pub Sub Prices, and What It Never Has

Does a Pub Sub cost the same at every Publix?

It’s a fair question at the deli counter.

The answer isn’t as simple as the sandwich.

Here’s what’s on the record for Florida shoppers, and what’s missing.

Two Weekly Ad Cycles

Publix’s weekly ad comes in two versions, one running Wednesday through Tuesday and the other Thursday through Wednesday.

According to the company’s ad FAQ, the first posts around midnight Eastern on Wednesday morning and the second around midnight Eastern on Thursday morning.

Which cycle applies depends on the store, and Publix doesn’t publish a map showing which stores follow which.

The ad site asks you to choose a store before it shows the ad for that location.

That matters for any sub deal that changes from week to week.

On a Wednesday, a store on the Wednesday cycle can be advertising a new week of deals while a store on the Thursday cycle is still running the old one.

The calendar isn’t uniform.

Publix also rotates its weekly deli sales, though it publishes no schedule of what’s coming next.

What the BOGO Map Shows

Publix’s FAQ says BOGOs are weekly buy-one-get-one-free offers, and that in some states this may let you buy one item at half price.

In other states, the same FAQ says, you must buy both items, with one of them free.

The FAQ names no state, but Florida is the one that requires buying both.

The half-price option may apply in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

That split runs by state only, with no version for part of a state.

It also describes how a deal is redeemed, not what an item costs.

The map can’t show what a Pub Sub costs before a sale, and it can’t show that two stores in one state charge alike.

Different question.

Delivery Versus Pickup Prices

A sub ordered through Instacart isn’t priced like a sub ordered at the counter.

Publix’s FAQ on the subject is headed “Why are prices higher online?” and says the increase covers what Instacart charges to provide the service, including shopping the order.

Publix adds that it isn’t trying to profit from the markup, and it doesn’t publish how big the markup is.

In-store pickup, the order-ahead service that covers subs, works the other way, since Publix says it comes “without any additional fees or charges.”

The company also says that if a featured item is on sale, the ordering site will automatically reflect the sale price.

So the number attached to a sub depends partly on how you buy it, with delivery and curbside carrying Instacart’s marked-up item prices.

Where you order matters.

Named Subs, Not a Fixed List

Four of the subs Publix names are the Chicken Tender, the Ultimate, the Italian and the Veggie.

They aren’t the whole menu, since Publix also lists a Baked Chicken Tender Sub, Buffalo, Sweet & Spicy and Chicken Bacon Ranch tender subs, and a Chicken Tender Wrap.

The chicken tenders are hand-breaded twice, in Publix’s words.

The online sub builder lists white, whole wheat and Italian Five Grain bread.

A May 2023 post on Publix’s corporate newsroom said Pub subs can be made with a fresh slice of Tutto Pugliese.

That post tells you to ask a Deli associate for it at a local Publix.

That bread ran as a limited item in 2023 and returned in May 2024, and it isn’t on the online builder, so availability at your store is worth asking about.

Ask at the counter.

Two Dated Price Reports

Two local media reports give a rough sense of what you might have paid, but neither came from Publix.

Fox 35 Orlando reported on June 9, 2022 that the chicken tender sub’s sale price would be $7.99, and it took that figure from a Facebook page called “Are Publix Chicken Tender Subs On Sale?”

Q105, a Tampa Bay radio station, wrote in January 2025 that a chicken tender sub comes to about $10 after a $2 discount.

Those figures come from different sources, cities and weeks, so you can’t subtract one from the other to get a price change.

Publix’s product page for the Chicken Tender Sub read “Starts at $8.39” when checked on September 29, 2026, which is a starting price rather than a promise that every store charges it.

Neither report is Publix’s word.

What Economists Found

A separate body of research looks at chain pricing in general, and it never mentions Publix.

Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford studied 73 chains using price data from 2006 to 2014.

Their paper, released in November 2017 and revised in 2019, found that most food, drugstore and mass merchandise chains charge nearly uniform prices across their stores.

The authors suspect managerial inertia may be the most important explanation.

They also note that retailers in some other sectors, including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King, do vary prices across stores without apparent customer outcry.

That finding is about chains as a group, so it can’t tell you how Publix sets any price.

It’s a group portrait.

What Publix Leaves Out

Publix publishes no pricing-methodology page.

It also has no page saying whether prices match from one store to the next, and it has never published a reason for its Pub Sub prices.

The company simply doesn’t say.

Publix does file annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission because it is registered with the agency under Section 12(g).

A 10-K covers the whole company, though, rather than a deli price.