I can measure my life in Pret sandwiches. My first, bought by my mother more than 15 years ago, respite from searching the clothing racks of suburban England in the hope of finding any suit that might fit. My second, in my late teens, an inaugural “professional” lunch on the first day of a two-week internship at National Geographic Traveller, travel paid for plus a £5 stipend for something to eat come 1pm. I stopped at the one outside Farringdon station and snagged a BLT and a flat white. A fiver covered it, with change for a Freddo.
Today £5 barely touches the sides. It wouldn’t even pay for some of the sandwiches on their own — the more complex baguettes full of relish, the limited-edition specials — let alone one with a now over-£3 coffee.
Why? Possibly because Britain is in a state of financial disarray: since Brexit, food prices have risen. In 2019, a loaf of bread cost an average of £1.04, according to the Office of National Statistics. Today a loaf is more like £1.40. Inflation spiralled chaotically after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. And energy bills have been unstable, shop rents climbing, wages up. Pret bosses might also want to make more money.
One of the most staggering price rises concerns Pret’s bestseller, the tuna and cucumber baguette, which was £2.99 at the tail-end of 2021 but costs about £4.25 today in commuter-heavy parts of London — an increase of 42 per cent, according to Bloomberg data. The chicken Caesar and bacon baguette, meanwhile, has increased from a reported £3.99 to £5.25, a rise of about 32 per cent.
One of the most staggering rises concerns Pret’s tuna and cucumber baguette, from £2.99 in 2021 to £4.25
So to purchase a sandwich, a drink and a packet of crisps or sweet treat — the Pret brownie has long been an agreeable option while on the hoof — means, as so many have pointed out (furiously) on social media, suddenly a £10 lunch is taking shape and what should be a relaxing hour becomes a little saddening. Not least when a Greggs sausage roll remains well below £2 — even in busy transport hubs.
Pret chief executive Pano Christou went on record last year to say that yes, those mounting energy bills, higher wages and spiralling food prices all played their part. This story has been told before. That same Bloomberg data said Pret’s salmon supplier upped prices by 50 per cent post-pandemic and annual pay for staff has risen by as much as 20 per cent. All this during a period where offices are frequented less, for better or worse, especially in areas where Pret forged ahead: in the City, long a hotbed of jambon beurres, suffering is everywhere. So cut the chain some slack.
But here’s the thing that piques my interest most: Pret is charging as much as 50 to 75 per cent more for some sandwiches and baguettes than it was before the pandemic, but between 2020 and 2023, inflation was around 20 per cent.
I resolve to put the stats to bed here. Allow me a dose of conjecture: Pret is expensive because it has nowhere else to go. It is, possibly, and only partly, the architect of its own demise. This is because the most tricky arena when it comes to food and drink is the middle ground.
Pret is lunchtime’s version of Prezzo, of Pizza Express, of Cafe Rouge: once trusted and regular haunts for those with a little cash to burn but no time to care about how it was spent. None were all that good but they represented a metropolitan sort of vibe.
Today, people must seek greater value, because none but the wealthiest in society have spare cash to splash. And then there’s the fact that dining out in London has improved immeasurably, not to mention tastes have evolved to be more adventurous. Restaurants in the middle, offering OK food with little atmosphere or sentiment, or, dare I say, narrative, are hardly worth considering.
Similar changes have affected Pret. Lunch, if it is to be sharply expensive, cannot be a misspent interlude today. And in London, there are all manner of independent places to find lunches for a tenner or thereabouts.
It has to be said that Pret prices vary. Visit a branch in a nondescript, lesser-travelled part of town and you might find menu items at the lower end: £3.99 tuna baguettes and £3.75 BLTs. And there is the Made Simple range, where simpler sandwiches such as the egg mayonnaise remain firmly at £2.99. "We have made a 0.4 per cent average price increase across our menu to account for some changes in our operational costs," Pret told the Standard. "This is well below the current rate of food inflation. We regularly review our prices to make sure we remain competitive whilst still offering good value for our freshly-made food and never compromising on our high-quality ingredients.”
Still, add a coffee and a snack to sarnies even at the lower end and customers are still soon approaching the £10 mark. This isn't just Pret, of course, but Pret is the high street flagship in good times and bad.
And because of all this, Pret has tried to stay relevant, to show its hand. It hasn’t wanted to fall into Greggs territory, where value matches quality, but has moved to try to justify its place at the higher-end of the high street. I’m just not sure it’s winning. It just doesn’t need to be that expensive, does it?
