Pret UK boss Clough: Dinner, deliveries and digital will drive transformation

The food-to-go specialist saw a slump in sales during lockdown at a time when commuters have been confined to working from home.

But Pret’s UK boss, Clare Clough, said the chain is now focusing on how to “bring Pret to the people more effectively” in a post-coronavirus world – and sees the dinner market as a key opportunity for growth.

The business has already lifted the lid on a new coffee subscription service, offering customers up to five hot drinks, smoothies or frappes a day, for a fixed cost of £20 a month. 

Clough said that would give Pret the opportunity to build “richer digital relationships with our customers” and better understand shopper behaviours such as purchase frequency, product preferences and regional variations in product popularity. 

It comes as Pret seeks to rebuild sales following a challenging period of trading. It was forced to axe almost 3,000 staff and close 30 stores last month after sales slumped to levels last seen a decade ago. 

Clough told Retail Week: “This is a continuing shift into having to understand how customers interact with you. Pre-Covid, we were very reliant on customers coming to us and as the world changes, we need to have a much deeper understanding of how consumers want to interact with us as a brand.

“The business has to adapt to how customers were changing already and are now changing even faster than they were before.”

As part of that drive, Pret plans to break into the lucrative dinner market, offering a new range of products that will be available in stores and for home deliveries. 

It has already been testing out plans in a number of its kitchens as it gears up to prepare evening meal options on a wider scale across its store estate.

Clough said: “Lots of people say Pret is a sandwich shop. For me, Pret is a healthy fresh food convenience retailer and therefore I think we can be entirely relevant in multiple dayparts.

“I’m interested to see how we start taking freshly prepared, healthy food to people at different dayparts as well as their traditional lunch or breakfast.”

She added: “We’ve been running a trial quite quietly over the summer in a few shops to operationalise the kitchen and production side to understand what we need to do. Now we’re ready to broaden that.

“In the coming months, you will see some more activity from us and that will be a focus over the next six to nine months to try and establish that.” 

Clough said delivery will be “a key part” of those future plans. It already sells ranges through online food delivery platforms Deliveroo and Just Eat but is taking further inspiration from the US as it bids to extend that proposition further.  

“We are looking at how we bring Pret to the people more effectively and delivery will be a part of that,” Clough said. 

“We’re looking at order ahead as a service, we’re doing some things around out-posting of coffee shops, delivering people’s lunch to their workplaces – that’s something we’ve seen people in the US do quite successfully.”