Pret A Manger

About Pret A Manger

Pret A Manger is an international freshly made sandwich and organic coffee shop franchise chain, founded in Victoria, London in 1986 by Sinclair Beecham and Julian Metcalfe. At the end of 2025 it has more than 500 shops in the UK and 750 shops worldwide across 21 markets. In May 2018, JAB Holding Company acquired Pret from Bridgepoint, and in 2019, Pret bought rival chain Eat. In April 2022, Pret launched Pret Express into its first three locations.

That same month, Pret announced it will expand into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, in partnership with existing franchisee, Carebrook Partnership, establishing 20 new Pret shops over the next decade. Pret also said it is to further increase its presence in London “villages” and commuter belt over the coming months, as well as expanding with new openings in Luxembourg and Germany.

In January 2023, it introduced a new value range and its first meal deal, and in August 2023 it expanded its Club Pret subscription and said it would be launching the scheme worldwide following its success in the UK. Christou said in the summer of 2023 there’s no reason Pret can’t reach 1,500 UK sites, while Clare Clough, managing director UK & Ireland at, said in October 2023 that the business plans to double its franchised store estate in the UK in 2024. “We’re now really starting to fill the map in the UK, and we are doing that with the support of franchise partners,” she added. “We’ve got 88 shops that are operated by franchise partners, and by the end of next year, we’re looking to double that number and to really sort of spread out.”

That same month, Pret said it is set to accelerate its US expansion under a new joint venture with existing franchisee, Dallas International, while the following month, Pret said the trial of Pret Express, its “24/7 self-service coffee-to-go solution”, is “ongoing”, having surpassed its initial target of having more than 50 locations in operation, across convenience stores, petrol stations, gyms and post offices, and has also linked up with convenience store chain Budgens.

In November 2023, Pret said it is to take its estate of roadside sites past the 40-mark in the first quarter of 2024, with four new openings with Moto. The company currently operates 36 roadside sites with the likes of Moto, Welcome Break and Motor Fuel Group. It is also ditching its final Veggie Pret stores, having launched the concept in 2019 and grown it to ten sites before starting to close them post-pandemic. In September 2024, Pret launched its 700th store globally, in Edmonton Green, North London, through franchise partner Carebrook Partnership.

In January 2025, as it prepared to make its African debut, Pret said £1 in every £4 now spent by brand’s customers is outside UK. The following month, Christou has said the company is pivoting now to be more of a franchise first organisation. He said: “As it stands today, 35% of our sales are through our franchise partners. In 2019, that was 4%. So, we are pivoting to be what I would call more of a brand service.”

In May 2025, Clare Clough, managing director of Pret A Manger UK and Europe, said because of the current levels of inflation in the market, “from time to time, we have to pass some of that on”. But she said, “as far as possible, we try to find ways to mitigate that”. She added: “Being part of leading the business out of the post-pandemic period has been challenging, but it has been very rewarding as well. I feel very proud of the shape that the business is in today and the way that we’ve recovered after such a near-death crisis.”

The following month, JAB Holding, the European investment group that acquired Pret for £1.5bn in 2018, said it has explored bringing in new investors to the sandwich and coffee chain ahead of a potential initial public offering. That same month, Clough said following the post-pandemic trend for hybrid working, the brand is looking to launch stores “where people live as much as areas where people work, especially in London”.

She added: “I think it’s for us to adapt our business to kind of suit the needs of consumers and now we do. We are very much living in a world where hybrid working exists and will continue to do so. We’ll continue to grow everywhere actually - there’s still plenty of opportunity, believe it or not. We’ve got loads of different formats now that we operate - tiny little kiosks to the big shops with seating areas. Even in London I think there's an opportunity to continue to grow.”

It came after Pret announced that it is launching new-format stores with made-to-order food and more dining space as part of efforts to accelerate its regional expansion across the UK. The new stores are designed to encourage customers to dine in and take their time, as it also adapts to increased remote working.

In September 2025, Christou said there is potential for the brand to have up to 400 travel locations and that it was exploring opening drive-thrus. The company’s first drive-thru is slated to open in the first three months of 2026 and is likely to be operated by a franchise partner at a motorway services, while a handful of drive-thru locations are in the works.

The same month, Christou said: “Most brands are franchisors. They will charge a royalty, say 6%. We charge a royalty, as others do, but we have a ratchet, so the better you perform on customer experience operational standards, the lower your royalty. The worse you perform, the higher they are. So, we’re trying to positively incentivise our franchisees. Five years ago, Pret didn't do franchising, whereas today, about 40% of our sales come from our franchise partners.”

In November 2025, Pret said it to scrap its self-service coffee machines - which had been rolled out to 110 locations - and focus on opening more sites. In March 2026, Pret A Manger said it has begun taking learnings from the new shop format it launched last year, which features a more “family-friendly environment” including a play area for children called the Little Star Café. The new format was launched in Pret sites in Broughty Ferry and Maidenhead, operated by franchise partners Hala Group and Joup Group, with more to be rolled out. That same month, Pret said it will launch its first UK drive-thru in May, in Cheshire.

That same month, Christou told the Propel Multi Club Conference: “There is versatility in the brand, and the two locations we’ve opened in the regions were an opportunity to look at customer expectations in those environments. Prets in city centres and transport hubs, obviously you want that quality of service, but it’s all about speed and hyper convenience. In those towns where people have a little bit more time to dwell, we wanted to give a bit more of a nod to comfortable seating, and slightly more of a nod towards coffee. We’ve tried two locations and we’re about to do three more - one new location in the north of England with one of our franchise partners and two conversions, which we haven’t done so far.”

He added: “Most of my career with McDonald’s (he started out there as a 16-year-old shop floor worker) I worked in drive-thrus, and I always through there was an opportunity for Pret. One of our franchisees, Motor Fuel Group, which we have 35 locations with, came to us and said it’d like to work with us on one. But I’m only really interested in doing a drive-thru if we can be the fastest drive-thru in the world, and we’ve set some aggressive service targets. We will open a second later this year, in Kuwait. We’re in no rush and would like to see how it plays out. We’ll spend a lot of time looking at the operations and getting a sense of how we refine that.”

That same month, Pret said it would be launching its first ever graduate scheme. Christou said: “We're launching, for the first time, a graduate scheme, and this September, we’ll be bringing on our first cohort of graduates. I’m very proud, when most companies are pulling back on graduate schemes, but we are looking at that being a real long-term staple of our business. They’ll do a two-year programme, and there will be a combination of time in shops across different departments, and then at the end of the two years, we'll offer them a job in a specific department.”

In June 2026, Pret said its US business in growth after exiting the joint venture it entered into with its franchise operator Dallas Holdings in October 2023. Dallas, which remains a franchise partner to Pret in other markets including in the UK, operated circa 50 Pret sites under the agreement.

The company also said its first drive-thru, which opened in Warrington in partnership with Motor Fuel Group, has received an encouraging response from customers, and that expansion in transport hubs and roadside locations in the UK remains a key focus for the brand. Pret also signed a deal to expand into Canadian airports.

Why franchise with Pret A Manger

• ✓Pret’s key requirements for franchise partners are experience in managing the operation of a mid to large sized food and beverage concept (e.g. sales turnover in excess of £10m), and sufficient access to capital. Franchise partners must be able to demonstrate a net worth in excess of £7m, with access to liquid assets of £3.5m.
• ✓Although Pret does not disclose exact figures, according to some reports, it will approximately cost around £400,000 to set-up a Pret A Manger store, and it has previously stated it will cost around £1.5m to finance the opening of three stores.
• ✓In 2021, Chesterford Group, Dallas Holdings and K&Z Group became the first Pret a Manger franchisee partners in the UK, following by Iceking the following year. Also in 2021, Pret expanded into roadside franchisee partnerships with independent forecourt operator, MFG, and motorway services operator, Moto.