Pret A Manger is making extra efforts to attract British employees into its stores, as an attempt to prepare for the fall in EU immigration following Brexit.
“Traditionally at Pret we just had our recruitment centre and everybody just came to us,” said its chief executive, Clive Schlee. “Now we are preparing for the future by reaching out ourselves.”
“We are very encouraged by the response. So we feel that we will be able to maintain our diverse, our tolerant and our very competitive culture, but with a higher British percentage over time.”
A start to the campaign included offering 500 British school leavers a week of unpaid work experience, offering them free food. This led to a backlash on social media, leading the company to commit to paying all participants Pret’s hourly starting rate.
Currently, 65 percent of Pret’s staff are EU countries other than Britain. Andrea Wareham, Pret’s director of human resources, said the group would struggle to find enough staff if it was forced to turn its back on EU nationals after Brexit.
Sales in Pret rose 15 percent to £677 million. On a like-for-like basis, sales were up 4.8 percent.
“This is another year of record results for Pret and our 12th consecutive year of revenue and ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) growth,”
Growth was partly due to the focus on vegetarian food and coconut porridge, counting for one-fifth of the company’s porridge sales in the UK.
A third “Veggie Pret” is likely to open outside London this year, according to the chief executive. The existing branches are in Shoreditch and Soho. Pret will also focus on the development of more vegetarian products.
“We don’t want to stop you eating meat, meat’s still a very important part of our menu, but we want to tempt people away so you don’t eat it all the time,” he said.