> rarely (never?) see sandwich shops doing in-house baking
Subway?
Subway?
Though I should point out that this is not baking, but simply putting premade delivered dough into an oven. The dough is baked, yes, but this is not what people mean by baking.
A bakery generally is mixing flour themselves.
It's been a while since I ate there, but the bread quality was for-sure not up to "we hired a baker to elevate our sandwiches" standards.
Frozen dough doesn't come out the same, nor does reheated pre-baked bread. It's fresh it just isn't made from scratch there in the store.
There's a couple dozen fresh dough facilities scattered throughout the US that serve all of these restaurants that need fresh bread, but without the cost of paying someone to mix flour locally.
The thing you buy at 6am (or 6pm, lol) was in an oven or a mixer (depending on whether the chain in question is baking on site or at the hub) at 12am that morning and on a truck at 3:30.