Pret a Manger has long been an imaginative business and its latest venture, a coffee subscription designed to help it adapt to ongoing market shifts accelerated by Covid, shows that it still is.

The pandemic has decimated footfall in Pret’s traditional city-centre playgrounds – especially London – and prompted the coffee and sandwich chain to take cost-saving measures. It is closing 30 branches and axing 2,800 jobs.

But Pret is not, in contrast to some retailers, relying on cost savings and cutbacks alone to see it through. The business is adapting its model fast to reflect changed conditions.

Pret has started off by recognising the big picture: it will take a long time for city centres to make a comeback, if in fact they ever regain their former glories.

“Rather than rail against the unfairness of the new world, Pret is determined to establish its place within it and become relevant in new ways”

Hectoring government and business lobby campaigns urging commuters to get back to the office are not going to pave the streets with gold.

In fact, they have been so clumsily executed that they may have the reverse effect, as people bridle at a patronising tone that has even prompted some companies to reassure employees they should feel no obligation to come into the office unless they choose to.

Rather than rail against the unfairness of the new world, Pret is determined to establish its place within it and become relevant in new ways.

Chief executive Pano Christou told the BBC’s Today programme: “There’s no doubt that workers will come into the office less often than beforehand. Pret needs to adapt itself to the changes of customer patterns and that’s where we’ve been very focused.”

Finding new opportunities

The new subscription scheme is one example. The approach has already been tried out by the chain’s sister business in the US, Panera – also controlled by investor JAB Holding Company, which bought Pret for £1.5bn in 2018 – and the experience so far indicates that it is working. Launched in February, before lockdown, it now has more than 800,000 members.

Panera chief brand and concept officer Eduardo Luz said in a Forbes interview that the initiative has kept the business front of mind for coffee shoppers. They are still visiting, although often at a later time than the traditional dash-to-the-office rush, and that change has also brought the opportunity to sell more lunch lines.

Alertness to new opportunities throughout various times of the day, which has also helped Greggs’ star rise as it adapted its proposition by moving into the late afternoon and evening food-on-the-go markets, is becoming increasingly important to Pret.

“New ventures can be informed by another benefit of the subscription service – assuming it takes off – and that is data”

Pret showed its ability to adapt when it began experimenting with an evening menu some years ago. During the pandemic, it enhanced that with a supper delivery pilot. There will be more in a similar vein.

Pret UK boss Clare Clough told Retail Week that the dinner market is a big opportunity.

New ventures can be informed by another benefit of the subscription service – assuming it takes off – and that is data.

Clough said there is the chance to build “richer digital relationships with our customers” and better understand shopper behaviour, ranging from purchase frequency to product preferences and regional distinctions. 

To find a path through the aftermath of the pandemic, Pret has looked at international markets to draw on the widest range of good ideas possible, while paying close attention to the detail of its domestic market.

It has not thrown any babies out with the bathwater, but sought new ways to make its core appeal relevant.

Such approaches are open to many other retailers, not just those selling coffee and croissants. Whether it’s Dixons Carphone’s ShopLive service, designed to combine the strengths of in-store expertise with the video technology that has become ubiquitous during the crisis, or John Lewis’s tie-up with home-workout specialist Peloton, retailers are showing their ability to adapt.

And it is such versatility and responsiveness to how customers are behaving that will characterise the survivors of this particularly brutal phase of Darwinian retail evolution.