Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

wired.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 192 posts

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#171

Post by ben_w »

chrisseaton wrote: post #138
ben_w wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I’m a senior software developer, I earn enough that I don’t need to care how much food like this costs. When I was a student, during term time (rather than the summer holidays when I had a job and lived with my parents), I made a game out of spending as little as possible on food. My record was 50p per day sustained over an entire term in 2004 (adjusted for inflation, that’s about £1 per day today). Accounti…

But presumably these people are aware that there are people who aren't living on a pound a day. They can't be genuinely surprised that most people out there can afford a couple of pounds for lunch? They'd have to be ignorant of the basic economic state of the nation to be surprised by this.

Anchoring bias is a powerful thing. As far as I can tell, most people think of themselves (in the System 1 sense) as representative of normal, no matter how rich or poor they are.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#172

Post by wdb »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #80
lordnacho wrote: post #10

My guess from chatting to some of the people in the stores is there's gonna be a bloodbath. Your average food shop is running on what kind of margin? Maybe 20% at best, 15% more commonly? I chatted with a guy who says his business is down 90%. The guy at Subway said something similar. Before the apocalypse, the business made sense because of the sheer number of people walking by. You could pay for the food, the labou…

Now that WFH has been "discovered" it's doubtful. I mean if everyone works from home just one day a week, that's 20% fewer sandwiches they will need to buy. I’m not so sure. Just because you’re working from home, that doesn’t mean you want to spend a significant amount of time shopping for and preparing lots of different things for your lunches. If you were OK with that, you could easily have taken a packed lunch to…

I am happy to spend the 10 hours less in travel a week on cooking a proper meal as I am less tired from the travel so enough energy to cook. Also during the day I can do prep work like cutting veggies during a short break or watch over the soup stock boiling.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
legerdemain wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, the name just means "ready to eat" in French. Perhaps they could have done like Panera and renamed themselves to something that wouldn't upset easily confused American diners?

I always misread it the same way and I'm Polish. English misreads confuse everyone , not just Brits and Americans, because for better or worse, English is the international language. Lingua franca , to make an obvious pun.

OT: 'Lingua franca' might be my favourite term. AIUI its a Portuguese term to refer to the 'Frankish language', the Franks being Germanic (not Gallic; somewhat akin to the situation of Angles and Britons) and somehow it's used normally to refer to English [not exclusively ofc, there are many lingua franca].

We could just say 'common tongue', but that's just not the English [Language] way - far too simple.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#174

Post by danpalmer »

himinlomax wrote: post #144
danpalmer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sandwiches are twice the price of a supermarket sandwich, and for many (especially students working at Pret) the idea of buying lunch out rather than making it at home and bringing it in may be a luxury. If you're on £16k a year, spending £1000 for a sandwich every day for lunch is a lot (£4 sandwich * 250 working days).

Thing is, for most people living in a large city and on a tight budget, it's not the cost of the ingredients that matters but the facilities to prepare them. I once worked at a large web company located in the center of Paris and that had a free use kitchen. It took me less time (<1h) to go shopping and cook for a few colleagues than it would have for us to go to a restaurant, and cost the same as buying supermarket…

Sure, but most people have food prep facilities at home, particularly for those who can't afford to eat out as much, so bringing in food in a lunch box is accessible to most.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#175

Post by lkramer »

Accacin wrote: post #149
lkramer wrote: post #141

I never understood the British sandwich culture. I'm currently living and working London and the number of times people will just go for a quick sandwich, which typically means some depressing mayo filled abomination with a packet of crisps and a softdrink is depressing when there are genuinely nice places to have lunch, for not much more. What is even more mind boggling is when you work with British people abroad at…

What's to understand? I saw people at lunch eating wrapped rice things in Japan from the 7/11 which weren't that great compared to other places I could eat (especially the 'fresh' ones which were easy to find), but people still ate them. In Singapore there were amazing food centers, and I saw Singaporeans eating at McDonald's! Why were they doing that when there were so many good options about? I've never understood…

Sorry, yes it came across as judgemental. I guess it's because food, especially lunch, is such an important thing in my life, pretty much the highlight of the day, it just makes me a bit sad when it's not the case for others.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#176

Post by throwaway83383 »

tony wrote: post #64

If you like this subject, you may like the Company Man on YouTube. Specifically, they have a playlist for "Company declines" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_9_unNR_e7MU1-fJy9B... Covers: Kmart, Blockbuster, RadioShack, Toys R Us, Pan Am, Kodak, Sear, Payless, Hostess, Nokia, Quiznos

Why does the guy who makes those half-laugh at every other sentence of his own script?

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#177

Post by [deleted] »

vinay427 wrote: post #94
porknubbins wrote: post #47

I always thought their almond croissants were really good. It makes sense they are from London because Europeans, even the UK seem to take baked goods more seriously than the US.

Is it that surprising that Europeans have higher standards for European foods, or at least the ones local to them? Foreign imports will always be seen as specialty items that tend to be overpriced and usually few and far between. You might find good European bread options in the US if you're willing to spend far more time and money to travel to that one bakery in town that has higher standards, but most people won't…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#178

Post by [deleted] »

renewiltord wrote: post #6

Fast eats like this are total rubbish in the UK. Don't know why. SF is so much better. Walk downstairs, grab a quick sandwich at Working Girls, or Specialty's (now dead), or Chipotle. Pret is like 7-Eleven food. Probably for the best that it dies. Fortunately, lots of food carts out in London that'll benefit.

[deleted]

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#179

Post by kps »

Lio wrote: post #85
kps wrote: post #60

Ah, if HN readers are fascinated by Pret a Manger, wait 'til they hear about J Lyons tea shops.

Don’t knock Lyons, they made the world’s first business computer[1] for those tea shops ...and they sell crumpets. This would be like finding out Pret had a side gig in quantum computing ...and crumpets. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

Yes, LEO was the point. A chain of English tea shops were bleeding-edge pioneers of computing.

Re: The Rise and Fall of Pret a Manger

#180

Post by chrisseaton »

tluyben2 wrote: post #84
switch11 wrote: post #67

Pret a Manger 1) Amazing food 2) Very nicely set up 3) Just read the blogs etc. that London women write about Pret a Manger. In their minds it's the kind of place where they can get good food and also find 'the man of their dreams' 4) very little real competition 5) most people have a decent amount of disposable income. You can eat utter rubbish at a fast food joint, or you can terrible tasting food from a convenienc…

1) matter of taste I would say; I find it quite horrible. Miles removed from something like Le Pain Quotidien, but yeah matter of taste. When working for a client in London I would rather skip lunch vs eat the plastic Pret serves. Or, you know, actually go to the pub and have a pint.

> matter of taste I would say; I find it quite horrible. Miles removed from something like Le Pain Quotidien, but yeah matter of taste. When working for a client in London I would rather skip lunch vs eat the plastic Pret serves.

It's just bread, salad, vegetables, meat, butter, prepared conventionally.

You're talking about it like it's some kind of synthetic replacement? It's just normal fresh ingredients. I'm not sure it's possible for them to be doing it so bad as to justify your reaction.

Post reply on HN