Pret: Food on the Move

Why bother with "best before dates" on Pret's sandwiches, salads, or yoghurts when everything is made from scratch each morning in Pret's kitchen? This also explains why sandwiches are packed in cardboard rather than plastic emphasizing their freshness. At the end of the day leftovers are given to charities that provide food to the homeless.

Sandwich chain goes global
Of all places Pret a Manger started in the UK where fish & chips and soggy ham & cheese sandwiches have been lunch favourites for generations. But two college friends Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe craved proper sandwiches using natural, preservative-free ingredients, so they took a £17,000 loan and purchased a £100 name from a boarded-up shop in Hempstead. They then began creating the healthy sandwiches they longed for back in 1986.

After they have become Britain's largest sandwich chain with 160 stores, the two founders want to be global leaders. They now have 11 stores in New York, 10 in Hong Kong and 1 in Singapore. Their expansion overseas has led to Ronald McDonald's involvement with a 33% stake.

At McDonald's speed
Experts claim that Pret a Manger was at the right place at the right time. Their customers are urban professionals, and while they may be rich on salaries, they are poor on time, yet they want a quality lunch in a jiffy. This cocktail is what Pret is all about. They provide Aberdeenshire salt beef, mustard & pickle or crayfish and avocado sandwiches just as rapidly as McDonalds.

Division of work
A recipe committee meet every Thursday together with Metcalfe, always on the outlook for new healthy combinations. He is a perfectionist when it comes to food. That explains why the pickle recipe has been changed 15 times in five years, chicken are flown in from Spain, and the mixture for oat and fruit slices is stirred with a four-foot oar to maintain the right texture and taste.

Beecham has from the beginning held the purse strings, but has partly handed them over to a former Pepsi executive, Andrew Rolfe. This way he can explore the oversea's expansions.

An odd couple
Pret a Manger staff, environmental organisations and others were initially hostile to the link with McDonalds. They feared it would mean lower standards or weaken the Pret brand that boasts Queen Elizabeth as one of its customers. Buckingham Palace has a weekly sandwich order of £1,000.

Up until now the Pret has upheld their ban of genetically modified food and elimination of mass production techniques, while being able to benefit from McDonalds logistic expertise, contacts and a widespread food distribution network. Both companies stress the importance of polite and efficient staff. In the Pret world staff is entitled to a 70p-an-hour bonus ito all who are sufficiently courteous and serve the food within the stipulated 90 seconds to a weekly mystery shopper. With regards to food, perhaps the time has come for McDonalds to learn some tricks of the trade from Pret?

Related information

Pret a Manger, official website
Food on the Move, inspired ideas for preservative-free, contemporary food, Murdoch Books - more on this Pret Book