Pret a Manger Offers Coffee Subscription Service

LONDON—Pret a Manger, the 450-unit international sandwich shop chain based in the United Kingdom, is offering customers up to five cups of joe per day if they join the company’s new coffee subscription service for a fee of £20 (about $26) per month, reports the BBC.

The chain’s new program, YourPret Barista, is one that management hopes will rejuvenate some of the business lost during the pandemic. But U.K. urban areas are saturated with coffee shops, and most are semi-deserted as many office employees continue working from home.

Pret, as the chain is called in Europe, has already announced that it will close 30 outlets and lay off a third of its staff. “There’s no doubt that workers will come into the office less often than beforehand,” said Pano Christou, spokesperson for the company. “Pret needs to adapt itself to the changes of customer patterns, and that’s where we’ve been very focused.”

Although many of the chain’s outlets are in central London, Christou said that 40% of its business was in London suburbs and the home counties, where customers were starting to return “much more swiftly.”

YourPret is the company’s “way of doing loyalty,” said Briony Raven, director of coffee and packaging, Pret. “It’s about giving people an easy choice, when they come back into their everyday routine.”

For the monthly fee, customers can select any “barista-prepared” drink from a skinny soya latte to a smoothie, using their phone to access the subscription, up to five times a day, seven days a week. To prevent misuse by anyone planning to get in a round of coffees for their friends and colleagues, individual drinks must be collected 30 minutes apart.

Consumer expert Kate Hardcastle said the fee was an “impressively low-ball offer,” illustrating how desperate retailers are to get people back into stores.

“There has been a significant rise in subscription models over lockdown, everything from socks to gin, so people are into the idea,” she said. “But it’s not going to be easy to translate [to] coffee shop[s]. What was once the daily latte is now interrupted. It may be that trips to the office are only once or twice a week rather than daily. Consumers are also well aware there could be regional lockdowns, which may mean they don’t want to commit big amounts upfront.”

As well as tempting shoppers back into the store, the offer paves the way for Pret to provide other services via the new digital platform and to engage with customers more personally. Pret has indicated that other innovations are being planned, including extending its evening meal offer and deliveries.

As NACS Daily has reported, St. Louis-based Panera Bread introduced a similar program earlier this year. For $8.99 a month, users can get unlimited hot or iced coffee or tea at any Panera location in the U.S.

Merchandising Europe