You�ve heard of the Cola Wars, now, next door to my office, the Sandwich Wars are raging.

Well, sandwich, salad and sushi wars.

On the ground floor of the building next door there are two retail spaces. One has been filled for about four years by a chain take-out sushi place that has a wide and cheap variety of frankly not very good sushi rolls. They have several other outlets in the city, and while the quality is not that high, it�s not awful either and so they do a brisk trade. Let�s call them �Downmarket Sushi�.

The other retail space had gone from owner to owner and various sandwich places and a more upmarket sit-down sushi restaurant have all failed. But late last year a new place specialising in juices, salads, sandwiches and coffee opened up. Not especially cheap, but featuring fresh food made on the premises, it quickly began to do well. They�ll be known as �Upmarket Sandwich�.

At the beginning of this year, Downmarket Sushi suddenly started selling, and promoting via spruikers, baguettes that looked remarkably similar to those sold by their neighbours, Upmarket Sandwich. Except they were selling them for $2 cheaper �for a limited time only�.

This appeared a bit desperate and there wasn�t too much sign that it had taken off, especially when Downmarket Sushi were selling off end of the day baguettes alongside their super-cheap end of the day sushi.

But either it did indeed have an effect on Upmarket Sandwich�s business, or the owners had really come to hate each other, because a few weeks ago all of a sudden you could buy a sushi roll for $1 with any juice purchase at Upmarket Sandwich. This was advertised on a giant sandwich board on the heavily trafficked footpath.

Then today I walk past to get my lunch from an entirely different outlet to find Downmarket Sushi�s spruiker dancing back and forth across the street in a chef�s hat advertising their new salads. Small salad $2.50, large salad $5.00! In other words, half the price of Upmarket Sandwich�s salads.

I�m not quite sure how Upmarket Sandwich can escalate the war from here, given they now have Downmarket Sushi�s entire market covered, but if they were to glance up the street they�d see that the 7-11 is now heavily promoting its fresh pre-packaged sandwiches, and in a very strange move the most established sandwich outlet on the block has suddenly opened a chocolate shop in the front half of their store.

Then again, we are heading into winter, so will it be Soup: The Final Frontier?

In some ways I feel a little guilty that they�re all putting in so much effort and only end up with my business maybe once every three weeks between the lot of them.

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Post weekend sporting update: woohoo Roos win again! Also, go Millwall and their Aussie stars; go Canaries, ever closer to Premier League; and I�ve totally stopped talking to the Kings.