Co-owner Fouad Saber standing outside his shop
(Picture: .)Pret has demanded a small south London bakery change its name - despite its French owners saying their name has nothing to do with the coffee shop giant.
Bread a Manger, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, south London, was hit with a letter from Pret’s lawyers in February which demanded it change its name.
Its defiant co-owner Fouad Saber, 42, claimed the demand was “bullying” and his customers have rallied around, even offering to sign a petition in support.
He told The Standard: “The letter was bullying us. It was completely bullying, it was ‘do what I say,’ change your name in one week, transfer your website, change the sign, or we will come and take everything.”
He added: “When I was looking at it, I was thinking it was a scam. I thought it was a joke, because we have nothing to do with Pret a Manger.
“The letter says we are too similar to Pret’s but we’re French, and they don’t even have the same meaning.”
He said his business was an artisanal bakery compared to Pret’s fresh fast food.
The owner insisted the shop design, logo and colours were different to the chain.
The business has been operating in Bermondsey’s Blue Marketplace for around eighteen months.
Mr Saber estimates the total cost of making the necessary changes could be as high as £10,000 - a sum he said he cannot afford to lose because of the pandemic.
“For us, we’re a small business, we’re a family business, and it’s been stressful, it costs a lot of money to do that,” he said.
However, Pret has insisted the name is still too close to theirs.
It said it had originally given a deadline of March 10 for the business to make some initial changes and a deadline of later March for the bakery to register a new name.
Jo Holinska, Head of Operations, said they would give the business the “time it needs to make these changes”.
“Thousands of Pret Team Members across London have worked hard to earn the trust of customers in the city over the past four decades, and although we appreciate it when other businesses take inspiration from what we do, this name is just too close, especially when many of the products are similar too,” she said.
“We’re more than happy to give the business the time it needs to make these changes and to provide any support we can, and we’ll be getting in touch again to see if we can resolve this in a fair and amicable way.”
Mr Saber, who co-owns the business with fellow Frenchman Kerleo Bertrand, has asked one of his customers who is a lawyer to help him keep his business’s name.
“We’re going to fight,” he told the Standard when asked what his next steps were.
“If it was fair, if we were doing exactly the same thing as Pret, I could understand it, but that’s absolutely not the case, because we’re an artisan bakery, we’re not a coffee shop.”
