Julian Metcalfe: Passionate Perfectionist

 
Since its beginnings in London in the mid-1980s, several factors have singled out Pret A Manger as a benchmark European fastfood brand: obsessive respect for quality ingredients, assembled fresh daily into sandwiches at every branch; staff who genuinely interact with customers; quirkily original design and customer communication; and continuous innovation in menus and methods. Julian Metcalfe, who co-founded the business with Sinclair Beecham, discusses industry standards, staff motivation and international challenges with Bruce Whitehall.
 

 
Pret differs from other sandwich chains in the way it makes and pre-packs sandwiches fresh in a kitchen, which is instore but out of sight. Is the lack of make-to-order a competitive disadvantage?
 
Julian Metcalfe: Quality of ingredients and speed of service are ultimately more important. If you want to make a sandwich in front of someone, and have our sort of volumes, then you need a line about a mile long. You can’t keep people waiting a quarter of an hour. I can’t bear queues. They mean unhappy customers and stressed staff. That has often forced us to have several stores close to each other. We call it ‘overtrading’ and customers don’t like it. Subconsciously, they tend to think that a company with two shops in one street is being cocky. The more shops you open, the better you have to be; if you don’t pay attention to what you are doing, both shops quickly start going down. The Continentals and the Americans go on about sandwiches custom-made in front of the customer. I have come up against this a thousand times. But go to New York or Paris and see what they are putting in the sandwiches. I would rather not stand at a counter and watch repulsive ingredients being piled into bread.
 

 
How do you view ‘radical freshness’ concepts (as practised by Continental operators like La Place in Belgium) and baking of bread in store?
 
Metcalfe: We have not gone down the route of making bread products from scratch ingredients in-store. It’s hard enough making up our sandwiches fresh in every store and I am wary about trying to do more. Do I wish I could have thousands of robots making the food in front of customers in 30 seconds? Yes I do. But it is unlikely that this will ever happen. It is a disadvantage There’s not much structure, and we don’t spend money on market research and things like focus groups. We just apply good old-fashioned common sense and passion for restaurants, food and cooking, plus recipe books. Our food team, headed up by a food development specialist, meet at least once a week, every week, for two hours or so each time. We are constantly doing food tastings. Separate to that, we have other meetings where other aspects of development are discussed. The food team includes a couple of young chefs. One is Nick Sandler, who knows a lot about cooking and is the author of a highly respected book on soup, which is a very important item on the Pret menu. We brought him into the business because he is the king of soup.
 

 
| 14 February 2007 | Bruce Whitehall |