As complaints continue about the price hikes by Pret A Manger and even the bad press having increased on this, I keep going back to private equity. But no, don’t let Pret off the hook, they knew exactly what they got themselves into when selling out. Pret already gave McDonald’s a 33% non-executive stake in the 2000s to get their foot into the USA market. Once in, they divorced their marriage of convenience and in 2008 Pret completely sold out to private equity.
Most of us are not financial gurus and know nothing to just a little bit about private equity (PE).
Since 2008 Pret are bought out by PE. British PE firm Bridgepoint bought Pret in 2008, squeezed the heck out of the company, which we staff felt first-hand. Then in 2018 Bridgepoint sold Pret to the second richest family in Germany, the secretive Reimann family with an extensive Nazi slavery past.
The Reimanns run Pret and many other companies, including veterinarian practices via their in tax haven firm JAB Holdings.
I touched on JAB on my post about the Pret Foundation Trust and how Trusts work, how “charities” are a big money makers via trusts etc.
The Pret Foundation Trust and JAB.
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With customers as well as the press asking why Pret raise prices so much, the penny dropped when taking a closer look into private equity.
Pret are tasked by JAB to double in size worldwide by 2026 while at the same time also being £700 million in debt.
I understand that JAB puts immense pressure on Pret to expand while quality all around is down and customer complaints are up. And it is hard to understand how they expand, except via franchises, with climbing up to $1 billion (£700m) in debt.
Little reminder also how CEOs and executives benefit hugely from PE while everything else goes downhill in quality and services.
Former CEO Clive Schlee bonus 2018:
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Current CEO Pano Christou, his bonus now in 2024 is £5 million and counting, plus year-on-year pay-rise. The Guardian article is from 2022:
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CEO pay and bonus is up, quality all around is down.
74% of customers on Trustpilot (1&2 star reviews combined) disapprove of Pret on a variety of issues, many having sworn to never set foot inside Pret again. Not to mention photos and videos all across social media from customers unhappy with food.
Pret’s Trustpilot score as of 19. December 2024: “Poor”
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The latest review while writing this blog post:
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Earlier in 2024 Pret RE-co-founder Sinclair Beecham has been brought back to Pret to help the business while the other RE-co-founder Julian Metcalfe threw Pret under the bus this year and has now made Clive Schlee CEO (restaurants) of itsu. CEO Pano Christou despite his 20+ years in Pret seems incapable and is more busy presenting himself as this great guy in the press.
But don’t get too excited, Pret and itsu are NOT in competition to each other. They are still very much buddies and support each other. As recent as 6th December 2024, five years after Clive Schlee “retired” from Pret, he still works together with Pano Christou whom he mentors. Schlee is still involved with the Pret Foundation Trust that just presents vulnerable people to the public while neglecting staff when they go through tragedy. These people are patronisingly called “Rising Stars”. And for the first time one such “rising star” is speaking out via Glassdoor (below).
When I became traumatically bereaved, I and then later an OPs (area) manager asked Pret in writing if I could be put under the Pret Foundation. No reply from Pret.
Facebook post, red arrow is Pano Christou, yellow arrow Clive Schlee:
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Glassdoor “rising star” review:
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Link to Glassdoor review.
It’s a very long review, but I quote a few sentences which I completely believe that staff.
Quote: “Working here has been the worst decision I ever made. Joining via the Rising Stars Programme meant the team I joined knew of my disability and homelessness problem and caring responsibilities. That still did not stop the manager and the team from treating me so awfully that they have not bothered training me in other areas in this roll and just stick me on the till. …
Also your manager will develop selective dementia when they are asked to attend meetings with the external people helping with mental health support and consistently lie to them about problems you’ve experienced. They will then go on to victimise themselves by writing to HR and then lie to them and say you’re the problem. Whilst working on your mental health, working here will make things worse and you’ll develop suicidal thoughts because of the treatment you are given.” …
End of quote.
Yep, completely believe that! Sounds eerily familiar with my story.
Charity, Foundations, Trusts etc. in a big company is ALWAYS for PR and tax breaks!
But that’s why I explained that Pret cannot distance themselves to itsu after Metcalfe made the “eugenics” comments to the Daily Mail in 2021 and I chased him off Twitter. Pret publicly distanced themselves from Metcalfe after many announced boycotts.
I screen grabbed /Metcalfe’s tweets where he kept reposting my tweets to him and then deleted his account a day later.
How I chased networth £215 million itsu founder,
Pret RE-founder off Twitter
Little side note, PE firm Bridgepoint that owned Pret between 2008 – 2018 now also bought itsu last year or a couple of years ago. Also, Clive Schlee owns half of itsu and is now as of November 2024 itsu CEO (of restaurants). Pret can proclaim to distance themselves all day long, they still work together and are close friends with itsu, Clive Schlee, Julian Metcalfe etc.
Regarding private equity, I came across a brilliant video by lawyer who used to work for a law-firm working with PE. He explains in simple terms in under 20 minutes why PE “sucks” and what three main ingredients are used once PE buys companies.
People always wonder why Pret is on every corner in London, just like Starbucks is in America and other companies. When the customer deaths and injuries became public in the fall of 2018, journalists incl. die-hard Pret fans started to write press reports. One such fan from the Times quoted a private equity investor, quote: “We buy a business, work out how many restaurants you can get away with in an area until it’s become saturated, then try to convince a new buyer that there is plenty more runway”.
In 2008 I started working in Pret. That year also Bridgepoint bought Pret and the squeeze started. Shops started to pop up on every corner, so it felt. JAB since 2018 had a slow start and the pandemic closed several shops. But now the immense task is on to double in size by 2026 worldwide. Quantity over quality.
When seeing Pret’s £700 million (close to $1 billion) debt, ingredient #2 makes the penny drop. Pun intended!
Other videos/writings I found as well where it is mentioned that when private equity buys a company, they also put these companies into debt on purpose. The video explains why.
Everything this lawyer explains about how PE works is exactly what’s happening to Pret now. In humble comparison, Pret is basically the slave to JAB who take full control, but Pret are burdened with sorting out the debt and the mess while JAB just laughs to the bank. All on the backs of staff, customers and the community itself.
Now this video is mainly about investors, but the same principles apply to companies that PE acquire.
I want to quote just a few things he says that has Pret written all over it.
Quote: “The PE firm borrows around 80% of what it costs to buy a company, and makes the company responsible for that debt.”
He goes on to explain why they do that and how the PE firm profits from the company’s debt. It makes you sick to the stomach.
April 2024 article below.
The board shake-up included bringing back RE-co-founder Sinclair Beecham who already pumped millions into Pret during the pandemic.
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Further in the video, quote (target company as in Pret or any company bought out by PE):
“The beautiful thing for private equity firms is, when the target company that they bought out succumbs to the debt obligation, it’s not the PE firm’s responsibility to repay ANY of that debt.
When the investments do well, the PE firm reap astronomical gains. But when the target company fails, the true losses fall mainly on other stake holders, the company’s employees, it’s customers, its suppliers, its creditors, and the community at large.”
Some of the results of this for which customers, staff etc. are paying the price:
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A DM sent to me by an anonymous Pret staff days before Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee weekend. I passed this on to Sarah Butler from the Guardian who then reported on it:
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Customers posting pictures of mouldy food to social media:
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Link to more mouldy food.
Poor quality food and drink, cheaper suppliers, exploiting suppliers as well:
Further in the video, quote:
“It goes without saying that a private equity partner with little or no experience from a particular industry, cannot improve actual products or actual services of the target company. All this PE partner, this glorified financial intermediary can do for its target company is to deploy the bluntest instrument that capitalism has to offer.
The PE firm helps the target company to cut costs through lay-offs, offshoring asset stripping. And the PE firm helps the target company increase revenue by deploying state of the art methods for price increase.
In other words, what PE firms do is to help target companies focus more on financial engineering and consumer exploitation, and less on improving the company’s products and services.”
Does that sound familiar with Pret? 😉
Tax-haven Luxembourg based JAB Holdings and the “Price Problem with Pret” which a brilliant article by the Financial Times this year picked apart in comparison to inflation.
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Also, since 2018 higher ranked employees in HQ were axed and the axing continues. Of course on Linkedin these staff claim to just be moving on, but I can’t help thinking this was a lay-off. Especially those from HQ who were directly involved in my ordeal, especially HR personnel like Nick Davies who pulled the strings to help Ivana the group manager to target me. Also, Lila Warren, the most vile act she did is now also gone from Pret. She was put on my case to test the waters when to fire me, even though she didn’t work in HR but was a development manager. HR Director Andrea Wareham to whom former CEO Clive Schlee introduced me as his “late night girl” and now also Head of HR David Carter. All gone from Pret after years, even a decade plus in the company. Most moved on to the competition like Five Guys and other big corporations. Just overpaid office workers who care nothing about people but themselves and the company.
Many of these long-term, especially higher ranked former staff still engage on social media on Pret stuff, especially on Linkedin and Facebook where no journalist reads compared to Twitter.
Further in the video, quote:
“PE firms serve as transmitters of information across businesses, sort of disease vectors for price gouging and legal arbitrage.”
One customer in 2023 put Pret’s price gouging into extreme terms, calling £2 for a small pack of crisps “financial rape”:
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2021:
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2024:
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Further in the video, quote:
“After [a PE company acquired a certain company within an industry] it initiated a wild shopping spree, acquiring on average one new company per month.”
Sounds familiar.
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And as JAB have entered the pet insurance at veterinarian market to the detriment of pet safety and pet owners wallets, US Senator Elizabeth Warren is coming after them now:
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Full video worth watching the whole 19 minutes:
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Again, don’t feel sorry for Pret, they knew what they were getting into and the executives are only out to enrich themselves.
Little fun fact, when Clive Schlee was still CEO in May 2018 before even I learnt about the customer deaths and injuries, he was informed about my blog late at night on 28. May 2018. Early morning on 29. May 2018 he made an announcement at 1:51 at night that Pret will give £1000 to all the 12,000 staff as a welcome to the new owners JAB Holdings. He made that announcement in panic after being informed of my website and trying to counter ahead of time.
I put the screenshots of my statistics on my blog where that day was THE most visited day for about a year.
The Day Clive Schlee had a Bright Idee
(No, “Idee” is not a typo! 😉 )
I want to end on a positive note, a hopeful in business, a courageous and principled CEO, who shares his company Riverford with his employees and whose words are blunt but much needed. A TRUE entrepreneur unlike Julian Metcalfe who grew up with riches and with Royalty at his father’s table, as well as Clive Schlee who grew up entitled.
This CEO was approached by venture capitalists if he wants to sell his company. His response:
»To sell my business, this thing that I created, that I poured my life, 30 years of work in; to sell it to one of those bastards (venture capitalists), it would feel like selling one of my children into prostitution. And I was never gonna do it.«
– Guy Singh-Watson
Founder and CEO of employee-owned Riverford
End thought: Support small independent businesses wherever possible and/or make your own food. repairs, clothes etc. Don’t fall for the lie that there’s nothing you can do about it. Yes, we cannot completely “escape” PE, but we have more choice than we realise. It just takes a little effort to seek those out and then stick with them, hoping they don’t sell out to PE.
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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. Schlee has been appointed CEO of itsu in 2024 by Julian Metcalfe who gave him the CEO spot at Pret many years ago.
I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret and What shop MANAGERS & HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.
Please also see the MEDIA page for more on my work with the press.
NEW LinkTree
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Thank you for reading/listening.
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Interview:
(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 but just press play)
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Bullied during bereavement in Pret A Manger 