Pret a Manger

History

Pret A Manger was founded by Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham. They opened their first Pret A Manger shop in July 1986, located at 173 Victoria Street in London. Beecham and Metcalfe met while studying at University. Their company claims they "created the sort of food they craved but could not find anywhere else."

The name, from the French prêt à manger, meaning ‘ready to eat’, was inspired by a French delicatessen Metcalfe and Beecham saw that had closed down on Hampstead High Street owned by Jeffery Hyman.

The pair pioneered Pret’s menu of freshly made natural food and are still significant shareholders in the company 30 years on.

In 2001, McDonald's bought a 33% non-controlling stake in the USA branch of the company, which they sold in 2008 to private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital, owners of clothing retailer Fat Face.

In 2011, its sales were £377 million.

Menu

The menu includes sandwiches, baguettes, pots and desserts, cold drinks, hot drinks, crisps and bakery items, as well as sushi, salads, soups, and cakes.

The company emphasises the use of natural ingredients and advertises all sandwiches are made on the day of purchase in a kitchen at each location (with the stated exception of a few small outlets). Food left unsold at the end of the day is collected by charities. Sandwiches are packaged in paperboard rather than sealed plastic.

Outlets

67% of its trade is in London, where around three-quarters of its stores are located. As of February 2014, there were 289 UK shops, 187 in London, nine in Scotland and two in Wales. There are 92 outlets throughout the rest of the UK. As of April 2016 Pret has expanded to New York (43 stores), Hong Kong (16 stores), Washington, D.C. (9 stores), Boston (6 stores) and Chicago (8 stores). Unlike many other fast food outlets, Pret a Manger does not franchise.

Staff

In 1998, the company employed 1,400 people, of whom 19% were from the UK and 60% were from other European Union countries, mainly in Eastern Europe. Pret A Manger employs one in every 14 applicants. Applicants go on a one-day experience day at a shop and their success is determined by the other staff members, who vote the applicant in or not. Many managers and senior executives have come from within the company.

Management

The organisational structure of Pret A Manger is divided between its stores and the main offices. The London head office is the hub for the UK stores, while the office in New York City is the hub for the American stores. Each store contains levels of positions that range from Team Member to the General Manager of the store. Above the in-store manager is the Operations Manager who is in charge of a group of roughly 10 stores, and above that are more senior management positions based out of the offices that are tasked with coordinating an entire region and maintaining communication with the company’s CEO in London. All the office employees are paired with a "buddy shop" where they work at least two days a year.

While the uppermost levels of management are located in the offices, not all the office jobs are above the store jobs in the organizational structure. Pret does not franchise any of its stores, in order to keep management strategies uniform across the entire brand. Orders do not strictly flow from the head offices in a top-down manner; instead, the channel of communication between the executives and the stores is open in both directions.

Pret a Manger promotes an internal culture as described in a leaflet entitled "Pret Behaviours." The Behaviours break down traits into three categories: passion, clear talking and team working – and identify specific behaviours as "Don’t want to see," "Want to see," and "Pret perfect!" The number of Behaviours Pret hopes an employee exhibits increases with one's rank within the company: Team Members should practise around six Behaviours, Managers ten, and the company’s executives all of them.

Affective labour issues

Pret A Manger has been cited as being particularly vigorous in extracting affective labour from its employees. Affective labour (or emotional labour) is work which involves manipulating a person's emotional state.

Pret A Manger demands go beyond traditional requirements for fast-food workers (such as courtesy, efficiency, and reliability) to such tasks as having "presence", demonstrating a quirky sense of fun, and exhibiting behaviour consistent with being inwardly happy with oneself. Pret A Manger uses mystery shoppers to ensure that employees deploy markers of a positive emotional state. This has led to some criticism of the company for overreaching while drawing some praise for the business model.

Pret A Manger Staff Union

In response to labour issues within the company, the Pret A Manger Staff Union was established in 2012 as an independent union with its principal demand being made around calls for a Living Wage. Andrej Stopa, the founder of the union was later sacked from his Pret branch.