Pret étrange Historie

Pret Recently sold for big bucks!

Could the 'Pret a Manger' allergy scandals be the result of some-kind of industrial espionage, or intentional market manipulation and share price meddling? Is there a behind-the-scenes double-dealing executive out to destroy the lucrative brand? Perhaps, the surface story is true and it's simply a case of inadequate food labelling? 

What do you think?


From The Guardian.online - May 2018

Every one of Pret a Manger’s 12,000 employees is to be gifted a £1,000 payout to thank them for their hard work as the popular sandwich shop chain is sold to a family of secretive German billionaires for £1.5bn.

Pret’s chief executive Clive Schlee revealed the windfall. Schlee had tweeted that Pret had been sold by its British private equity owners Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings, a Luxembourg-based investment fund belonging to Germany’s hugely wealthy Reimann family. Brothers Wolfgang, Stefan, Renate and Matthias, descendants of the founder of what would become consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser, are estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth just over $4bn (£3bn) each.

“Today is a big day for @Pret,” Schlee said. 
“As we welcome JAB, we’ll be thanking the people who really matter by giving each of our 
12,000 employees £1,000 when the deal completes.”

Natasha Ednan Laperouse family

Schlee later expanded on his tweet to confirm that the £1,000 bonus would be paid to all employees who are on the payroll during the week the deal completes, adding: “It’s serendipity for those who have just joined.”

Even employees joining Pret between now and when the deal is official late in the summer will collect the £1,000. It should help with recruitment, which Schlee has complained has become tough since Brexit. The chain, which draws a large proportion of staff from the European Union, told parliament last year that just one in 50 job applicants were British because Britons did not view its shops as a “desirable place to work”.

The sale will also mark a lucrative payday for Bridgepoint, which bought the chain for £364m in 2008. William Jackson, chairman of Pret and managing director of Bridgepoint , said the chain “has a unique culture and is a great British success story”. Jackson said he would continue to pick up Pret’s porridge pots for breakfast and his favourite hoisin duck wraps for lunch.

The chain opened with a single shop, near Victoria station, in central London in July 1986. It was started by entrepreneur Julian Metcalfe and his university friend Sinclair Beecham. They bought the brand out of the liquidation of Pret’s first incarnation in Hampstead a few years earlier.

Pret a Manger sandwich and crisps!

There are now 530 Pret shops in the UK, 92 in the US, 26 in Hong Kong, 24 in France, two in Dubai and Denmark, and one in each Singapore and the Netherlands.

Metcalfe shared in a £50m payday when a third of the business was sold to McDonald’s in 2001. It is thought that Metcalfe sold almost all his remaining stake in Pret in 2008 when it was bought by Bridgepoint. The company declined to comment on Metcalfe’s current involvement.

Metcalfe went on to create Metcalfe’s skinny popcorn, which was sold to crisps giant Kettle Foods in 2016, and Asian-inspired restaurant chain Itsu, in which Pret’s boss Schlee is a big private investor.

The Reimann’s JAB has been on a global acquisition spree, buying up coffee, tea and snacks brands including Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Douwe Egberts and Tassimo coffee, American bakery giant Panera Bread and Dr Pepper Snapple. It also owns speciality brands including San Francisco’s Peet’s Coffee and Might Leaf Tea, Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea and Oregon’s Stumptown Coffee.