In the months before Pret A Manger's first New York sandwich shop opened last July, the chief executive, Andrew Rolfe, walked the streets of Manhattan, timing how long it took to get lunch at various potential competitors, from the upmarket sandwich bar Xando Cosi (15 minutes), to the average deli (12 minutes).
"You're in a queue waiting while some bloke in front of you is going `no, no, no, a little bit of this, a little bit of that,'" said Rolfe, a 34-year-old South African and former PepsiCo executive.
Lunch at Pret A Manger, he said, is much quicker (90 seconds). That is because its sandwiches are made at dawn in the shop's basement, then packed so they are ready on shelves when customers arrive.
Pret A Manger, a 15-year-old British chain with a French name that means "ready to eat" (but without the accents), says it uses fresh ingredients with no additives or preservatives. Even so, such assembly-line food seems anathema in New York, its first overseas expansion market, where an "everything" bagel with low-fat tofu vegetable cream cheese can be had at almost any corner deli.
Although New Yorkers like to have it their way, Rolfe contends that they like speed more.
Against the odds
Defying skeptics who said prepackaged sandwiches would never make it in New York, Pret A Manger's first store, on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, is expecting to record US$1.6 million in sales its first year, on par with an average British shop, Rolfe said.
The company opened its second store, on Seventh Avenue near 39th Street, last week. And 30 more are scheduled to dot Manhattan over the next two years, selling sandwiches for US$3.25 to US$5.55. As if taking a bite out of the Big Apple were not enough, Pret A Manger is preparing to open its first shop in Hong Kong in early 2002, with Continental Europe next on the list.
Such an expansion, costing roughly US$25 million, is big for a company whose 115 British stores generated around ?4 million (about US$5.7 million) in pretax profit on ?120 million in sales last year, according to industry consultants. Pret A Manger, privately held, does not disclose financial figures.
Financing part of that growth is McDonald's, which bought 33 percent of Pret A Manger for an undisclosed sum in January. The deal raised an outcry from Britons, who feared that McDonald's, king of processed fast food, would swallow up what many of them consider a national treasure and a champion of wholesome, natural eating.
It took Rolfe 14 months to negotiate the deal; one of his conditions was that Pret A Manger retain control for now, although McDonald's has the option to increase its stake. "We don't want their help in food, but we do want their expertise buying real estate in Hong Kong," Rolfe said.
For McDonald's, Pret A Manger fits into an ever-expanding stable of restaurants that also includes Donatos Pizza and Chipotle Mexican Grill. "There are times when people want something other than a burger and fries," said Brad Trask, a McDonald's spokesman.
Pret a Manger may be thinking big, but, in many ways, it is still run as a small, close-knit business. The entryway of its London headquarters on Palace Street is papered with testimonials from customers. The night before the deal with McDonald's was to be announced, most of its 2,200 employees gathered at Fabric, a London nightclub, where they learned details of the agreement and peppered executives with questions.
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