Publix Chicken Tender Sub Prices and Every Version
Eight different subs at Publix are built on its chicken tenders, and on the menu we checked, all eight cost the same. The original Publix chicken tender sub is $8.39 for a half and $11.99 for a whole.
Publix’s Southgate Shopping Center store in Lakeland, Florida (#1270) charged those prices on publix.com on October 22, 2026, and other stores can differ.
The tenders are breaded twice by hand and fried. A baked version, at the same price, starts at about half the calories.
What a half and a whole cost
The Publix subs and wraps menu shows only the half price on each card, so the whole price turns up once you open the builder. The same tenders also come in a wrap and on a salad.
| Order | Price | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken Tender Sub, half | $8.39 | 450 to 1,955 |
| Chicken Tender Sub, whole | $11.99 | 890 to 3,950 |
| Chicken Tender Wrap | $8.39 | 690 to 1,040 |
| Chicken Tender Salad, half | $8.39 | 480 to 570 |
| Chicken Tender Salad, whole | $11.99 | 960 to 1,140 |
Prices vary by store, and the calorie ranges are Publix’s own, which swing with the bread, cheese and sauces you pick.
A half costs 70 percent of the price of a whole for half the sandwich. The wrap comes in one size and holds two tenders, which Publix lists at 470 calories.
What goes on the original
Publix’s menu describes the sub as “our famous hand-breaded chicken tenders, with provolone, lettuce, and tomato.” Its product page goes further on the tenders.
The rolls are baked every day in the store’s bakery ovens. Publix recommends provolone for its subtle flavor, but the builder offers eight cheeses, four breads and a lettuce or spinach base instead of bread.
After that come 17 toppings, each light, regular or extra, and 12 condiments and sauces, from buffalo sauce and buttermilk ranch to lemon garlic aioli and Publix’s 1930 Sauce. You can have it pressed, toasted or cold. Bacon, double cheese and mashed avocado cost $1.00 each, and a drink and chips knock $1.00 off as a combo.
Publix’s own tip, printed on the same page, is to add pickles and onions for extra crunch.
Seven other ways Publix makes it
Several of the spin-offs started as customer habits. In May 2023 Publix added four named versions to every store’s menu, and a spokesperson told FOX 35 Orlando they came from the most popular combinations people were already ordering.
The Lakeland store’s menu lists seven versions beside the original, each at $8.39 for a half and $11.99 for a whole.
| Version | What changes |
|---|---|
| Buffalo | Tenders coated in buffalo sauce |
| Hot Honey | Honey and cayenne sauce |
| Chicken Bacon Ranch | Bacon and buttermilk ranch |
| Sweet and Spicy | Sweet sriracha, 3 Pepper Colby Jack |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Bacon, cheddar, Spicy Gold sauce |
| Sweet and Spicy Chili | Sweet and spicy chili tenders |
| Baked | Baked tenders with provolone |
The Parmesan Chicken Tender Sub, with marinara, provolone and Parmesan, was one of the four added in 2023, and it wasn’t on the Lakeland menu when we checked. Ordering the original with marinara and Parmesan isn’t an option there either, since neither appears in the builder.
Baked tenders cut the calories
The Baked Chicken Tender Sub swaps the fried tenders for baked ones and costs the same $11.99 for a whole. Publix lists four baked tenders at 400 calories, against 940 for four of the fried ones.
Built as light as the builder allows, a whole baked sub comes to 440 calories and a whole fried one to 890. Both ranges climb quickly with cheese and sauces, and the baked sub tops out at 2,420.
At the other end, the Hot Honey sub has the highest range of the chicken tender subs, 1,870 to 4,660 calories for a whole. Its lowest build is 980 calories above the original’s.
Sale prices since 2019
When the whole sub goes on sale in the weekly ad, Florida TV stations tend to report it. Their stories trace both the sale price and the regular price climbing.
| Sale week | Sale price | Regular price |
|---|---|---|
| November 2019 | $6.99 | $8.99 |
| February 2020, all subs | $5.99 | About $8.99 |
| May 2022 | $6.99 | $9.99 |
| June 2022 | $7.99 | Not reported |
| October 2026, Lakeland | No sale | $11.99 |
| November 5 to 11, 2026, Lakeland | $8.99 | $11.99 |
All prices are for a whole sub. They come from FOX 35 Orlando (2019 and June 2022), WSVN (2020) and News4Jax (May 2022), and the May 2022 regular price is the $6.99 sale price plus the $3 saving Publix advertised. The 2026 rows are the Lakeland store’s prices on publix.com.
The June 2022 sale broke the usual $6.99 sale price, and FOX 35 found shoppers grumbling online. One wrote, “Inflation has hit the Pub Sub.”
For a while a fan-run account, Are Publix Chicken Tender Subs On Sale?, tracked these weeks for nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. It went quiet in 2021 after Publix apparently objected to its text-alert service, NBC 6 South Florida reported.
With the regular price now $3 above its 2019 level, we’d treat $11.99 as the price to beat and save weekly purchases for sale weeks. Our weekly Publix sub deal tracker shows which sub is discounted in the current ad.
Who invented the sub
Publix has records of a chicken tender sub recipe going back to 1992 or 1993, it told the Tampa Bay Times in 2019. That’s earlier than a story a Facebook user posted about friends inventing it at a Fleming Island Publix in the late 1990s, an account a Publix spokesperson called “more fairytale than fact,” as Mental Floss recounted.
Ordering for pickup
Every version can be ordered online for in-store pickup, and the menu says it can be ready in as little as 30 minutes. A sub order can be canceled until two hours before its pickup time.
For a group, the same tenders come by the pound and in hot party boxes, all priced in our guide to Publix fried chicken and tenders. If the group wants subs instead, sub platters priced by size cost less than the same subs bought whole.
The regular prices of every other sub are on our full Publix deli price list.
