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Clare Clough’s interview with City AM.
And all the Pret execs now think, “Clare, your turn”.
Yes, indeed.
This is not the past Guardian or Times article to put Pret’s bullshit out anymore like they did before I informed them and the customer deaths spoilt their illusions about Pret. this is now for and with City AM in a desperate attempt to be “legitimate” in the food and coffee market. AND City AM might attract investors as Pret’s owners now aim for public funding. 😉
Pret’s owners are trying to sell shares to the public now, for the public to be like mice jumping into the water bucket trap.
Off the bat, is Clare Clough getting ready to be the next Pret CEO, or just daydream about it? Pret continue to have a reshuffle in their executive team (looking at you Burger King), and it seems Pano Christou is just the face of the leadership pyramid, just like Clive Schlee was the Ronald McDonald clown of Pret. Keep smiling for the mystery shopper.
For everyone who reads this, I’ve sent this post entry to Clare Clough and the “journalist” who interviewed her. But the journo already knows Pret’s bullsh!t, that’s why Pret choose those who print their lies.
I start off blunt and direct. Clare Clough’s recipe in this interview is bullhs!t with sprinkles of “freshly made” rat droppings.
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One of the early questions is, if there is anything that keeps her up at night?
“No” she says, she’s a great sleeper.
Of course you sleep well at night if you don’t care about customer and staff safety while you force staff to smile during intense stress and then take their money (wage theft) …
Further, bullsh!tting about minimum wage, inflation, price increases etc. to right out lying about not shrinking portion sizes:
Some examples of customers calling out Pret shrinking portions. I also have followed the issues with the iced drinks since 2020 where Pret used to do 16oz plastic cups for iced drinks. The size from what I see on photos and rubbish in the street is now either 12oz or no more than 14oz. I worked with the 16oz cups in Pret, having had to order these. But since the pandemic, Pret shrunk the cup sizes amongst other food and packaging items.
Just a few recent ones:
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etc. etc.
Not to mention the ongoing air gap in their wraps for which Pret got sued in New York, but as usual quickly settled out of court. Here just the tip of the iceberg which is not updated, but continues even in 2025.
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Further in the interview, a question on if there is something she would want the government to do for Pret. First of all, Pret already skimmed the government while cutting wages and ramping up pay and bonus for the CEO.
CEO bonus is now £5 or even £6 million & counting, plus year-on-year pay-rise.
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Article by Sarah Butler for the Guardian in 2022:
“Pret CEO handed near-£4m bonus in year staff pay was cut.
Pano Christou also given 27% salary rise in 2021 as chain took more than £50m in government support”.
This of course means that Clare Clough got a chunky pay rise and bonuses as well.
Secondly, to say that the government should concentrate on British businesses is a slap in the face of small independent BRITISH businesses. Pret are currently owned by the 2. richest family in GERMANY, the secretive Reimann family with an extensive Nazi slavery past. The Reimanns run Pret and many other companies incl. pet insurance, veterinarian clinics via their JAB Holdings firm in TAX-HAVEN Luxembourg.
Plus, Pret are tasked by JAB to aggressively expand to double in size by 2026 worldwide. Pret going into other countries, taking away business of local businesses in those countries and cities is another typical slap in the face by a large corporation who don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Another question, how do they make Pret stand out?
Her answer about loyal customers pointing out team members and other things, first of all, every business has that as every business, large or small, have loyal customers.
Secondly, 72% of customers on Trustpilot (1&2 stars combined as of June 2025) disapprove of Pret on a variety of issues, many having sworn to never set foot inside Pret again.
In above link, scroll down to the blue oval feature, “See all xxxx reviews”.
Plus, a recent Facebook comment from a loyal customer of 20 years to Pret. Clare Clough, like Pano Christou and the rest of their leadership team have their heads in the sand and keep talking the same bullsh!t since years.
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Start of the Facebook comment, quote: “As a loyal customer of Pret for the past 20 years, it pains me to share my disappointment with the recent decline in service and quality. Over the years, I have …”
After I sent this to Clare Clough, Pret will work on getting more positive reviews in. Watch the 1 and 2 stars rise. 😉
Regarding the body cameras in the interview:
I explain in my post why I think Pret introduced body cameras in certain areas supposedly as staff are at the heart of Pret’s business. Pret workers are NOT at the heart of Pret’s business. Never have been, never will be. They are pawns in Pret’s fake-friendly game until they are not needed anymore due to personal tragedies, illnesses or fatigued etc. And the Pret Foundation is for tax breaks and brownie points with the public.
“The REAL Reason for Body Cameras in Pret”
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I’ve put the videos and photos of people storming Pret stores in the above post.
Again, bullsh!t. Pret don’t give a toss about their staff. It took Pret over a year to act about TWO customer deaths and multiple injuries, only when it became PUBLIC Pret slowly started to act on labeling.
And it took a £800,000 fine from Westminster Council after a staff almost died in a walk-in freezer, trapped for 2 hours 45 minutes, NOT 2.5 hours. In a freezer, every second counts. I was informed it was 2 hours 45 mins.
There were call-outs for the faulty freezer door handle which Pret kept ignoring. AGAIN.
I write about this here and why I believe the staff wasn’t missed by other staff for over 2 hours:
“Pret fined £800,000 after Staff Trapped in Walk-in Freezer”
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It took this fine, down from the initial £1.6 million as Pret plead guilty early, for Pret to get an outside firm to look at safety issues. This after 42 years in business. (Pret was started in 1983 by Jeffrey Hyman, who then sold the name, rights etc. to the 2 rich college students to re-start again).
In a nutshell, it took Pret over a year of people’s “unpleasant behaviours towards their customers” as in relentlessly being targeted by pro-Hamas demonstrators since at least February 2023 into 2024, who swamped into Pret stores. This bullying at times involved even emptying off whole shelves of food they said they give to people in need.
This relentless targeting of Pret stores, putting more stress on staff, who unlike customers, could not just walk out of the shops, came after they learnt in 2022/2023 of Pret’s plans to open in Israel. The aggressive invasions of Pret stores intensified after 7th October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. It took Pret over a year to implement body cams WHILE refusing to invest in security!
And needless to say, Pret relented and stopped their plans to open in Israel, even paying compensation to the franchisee who planned to open for Pret.
But the cameras have nothing to do with the safety of staff. Pret put the onus on low-wage staff (team leaders) with cameras to be in the firing line of aggressive people, who aren’t even customers. No investment in security guards.
And of course the team members’ feedback is positive, who would say a bad word and how they really feel with the way Pret gaslight and manipulate staff, especially via micromanaging weekly mystery shopper visits.
Team leaders want promotion, no one dares to say a critical thing. What they really need is 1. a union and 2. security guards.
Clare Clough pretends to care by saying that Pret give staff the “tools that they need”, while a camera will NOT help staff, especially with mental health when pro-Hamas demonstrators storm Pret stores. It will just help Pret identify them, but staff are AGAIN left behind picking up the pieces with anxiety attacks, depression etc. working in Pret.
I am not surprised, I am just writing this for the journalist who interviewed Clare Clough.
Further, for her saying that the biggest challenge for Pret is wage (minimum wage increase) and inflation. Again, all about money. Pret’s challenge continues to be food poisoning, now also worldwide.
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And regarding wage, see above with CEO Pano Christou’s increase in wage and bonus DURING the pandemic after skimming tax payers and staff. Also, do some research on wage theft by Pret etc.
And regarding inflation, the BEST article about this regarding Pret’s wage cuts and price increases has been by the Financial Times’ “The Price Problem with Pret” where the journalist is taking Pret’s bullsh!t apart with style! And what I knew already since years and wrote about regarding the bogus “Pret Index” that I watched for a long time that didn’t add up with Pret’s claims. The FT finally disbursed that bogus “Pret Index”.
This reminds me of a recent podcast interview of former Pret and now new itsu CEO Clive Schlee, who was asked what the biggest challenge for him was in itsu and later Pret. Not ONE time did he mention customer deaths and injuries as challenges with Pret. All his challenges was, as usual, money related. I mention this in “Clive Schlee now CEO of itsu (shops)”
Regarding pay and mystery shopper bonus in City AM’s interview:
Pret pay a few pennies more than the competition to lure workers in and look “generous” in the public. What they fail to tell you is:
- Wage theft by Pret (two class action suits settled in the USA), I had to chase my pay for YEARS. It is also VERY common for shop managers to regularly “forget” to pay the correct hours worked, while they NEVER forget to delete hours when a staff goes home early.
- Pret managers coerce staff to work overtime without pay. This is Pret’s leadership fault, not just the shop managers. Pret set the times for tasks so unrealistic and tight, that it is humanly impossible to work at that pace, as well as keeping food safety standards. If staff can’t finish the unrealistic times set, they are manipulated to work overtime without pay. It’s also an indirect wage theft.
- Bonuses are harder to attain now, so Pret avoid paying bonuses.
- I was also tipped off anonymously again that at times when the mystery shopper reports come in, that the person who sees them first DELETES bonuses and/or the “Outstancing Card” rewards. When I worked at Pret, over the years colleagues would notice that after every summer and winter party Pret put on for staff, which costs Pret tens of thousands of pounds, that many shops don’t get the bonus. I write extensively about Pret’s psychological abusive mystery shopper scheme on my blog and all over social media.
I received an anonymous text, qupte:
“I know people who conduct mystery shopper reports and individuals working at shops whose reports have been affected. In some cases, when someone is nominated for an “outstanding performance” by the mystery shopper, they should receive an extra £100 that week. Unfortunately, there have been instances where the “outstanding performance” line in the reports received later by the Pret shop has been left empty, with comments deleted, preventing anyone from receiving the extra £100.” End of quote.
Back around 2019, Pret then quickly put some info on their shop walls to inform customers of the mystery shopper scheme to try and counter my writings. I almost took my life when I was bullied during bereavement because at times I couldn’t smile for the “misery” shopper as I renamed them.
I was a team leader and replied with disbelief, and that my colleagues shouldn’t be so mistrusting. But after what I’ve been through with Pret and the research I’ve done on court cases with wage theft etc. I absolutely believe this allegation.
My shops that I ran immaculately and without cheating (stretching dates etc.) was often in the top 10 of shops, even top shop and number 2 a few times. We KNEW that our shop did well when we read the bogus mystery shopper reports claiming issues that we KNEW wasn’t true where we then did not get bonus, straight after the summer and winter parties. - Pret’s NHS PR stunt at the start of the pandemic where they announced free coffees and 50% off food for all NHS workers. The very next morning, CEO Pano Christou sent out an email to all shops and HQ announcing cuts to staff. Staff basically PAID for the NHS PR stunt. I write about this in “To NHS Employees” as I was again tipped off by staff contacting me.
- To my knowledge, Pret DELAYED paying staff three times under dodgy excuses! Once when I worked at Pret around 2012 and Clive Schlee was CEO, with Pano Chrsitou either already or just becoming UK Managing Director. I, like we all, assumed this was a mistake. But I see now how systemic this is, “borrowing” from low wage staff to reach targets for the CEO and leadership/share holders. And TWICE in 2022 when I was tipped off anonymously and passed it on to Sarah Butler from the Guardian.
- Loose Women presenter Nadia Sawalha with her half a million followers on Instagram had some stern rebuke for Pret after the public got wind that Pret made the “temporary” pay-cuts permanent. Nadia made a mistake in her rant, she kept saying that staff get £8.91 (at the time the national minimum wage) and Pret wanted to cut that by 11%. In the heat of the moment she made the mistake. What Pret did was to cut the few pennies staff always get in Pret, cut it down to £8.91 minimum wage.
Pret were already named and shamed by the government for paying under the minimum wage for some staff, so they legally could not go under that. That was just Nadia’s mistake. But it’s clear that she meant that Pret cut pay after all staff went through, carrying Pret through the pandemic, while the executives sat at home or in socially distant air-conditioned head office.
I combined her rebuke with some staff reviews:
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Regarding if she has any regrets, Clare Clough, just like with her sleeping-well-at-nights typical Pret bullsh!t responses. She sleeps well at nights and has no regrets. Everything so un-human and unrealistic, especially in the business world, as well as Pret being steeped into £700 million debt just like a good private equity run business is. This got the RE-co-founder Sinclair Beecham back in Pret to help fix the mess Pano Christou can’t seem to handle, even after 20 years in Pret. Christou is busy portraying himself as this awesome CEO in the press.
If any business leader always sleeps well at nights and has no regrets, they’re either lying or are psychopaths. Or both!
And keep in mind that before Clough became UK MD in 2019, she had to prove her loyalty to the Pret-Gang by facing the press after the first customer death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse became public.
Clough is stumbling around in the interview because she faced a tough journalist who asked some tough questions, unlike most journalists just swallow everything Pret dishes out. Video from ITV posted on 28. November 2018 on Twitter.
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We staff weren’t even told. Absolutely nothing was done. No urgency. No nothing! UNTIL it became public! As a former team leader with one of the key responsibilities of my job description being health and safety, I still take great offence to that!
And especially with Pret’s bullcrap slogans of “Doing the right thing naturally” which always bothered me! They slowly made that slogan disappear, especially since the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned Pret in 2018 from claiming their food is natural.
I also question Pret’s claim that their coffee is organic as the beans are so cheap, Pret’s coffee having a very bad reputation, and Pret already stopped doing fair trade beans a few years ago. But that’s for another day.
Further in the interview, regarding the Pret subscription which was partly a scam from the get-go. Firstly, Pret advertised the 5 drinks per day as “endless” or “unlimited” drinks. Pret had to stop advertising this as complaints rolled in.
Then customers who cancelled their subscription, or THOUGHT they did after receiving email confirmation of the cancellation or the pausing of the sub, found months later that Pret continued to withdraw monthly fees from people’s accounts. As usual, I collected the complaints and Money Saving Experts did a report on it:
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I worked with journalist Mike Powell on a report after I observed and kept writing about customer complaints that shops keep having excuses to not do the expensive iced drinks (frappés, smoothies) on the subscription.
“Pret customers complain over drink subscription deal”
When Mike and I were working on a second follow-up report the next year (2022) for the BBC, as customer complaints continued, Mike did the routine thing as a journalist contacting Pret for a statement before publishing the new article. After Mike contacted Pret, Pret quickly made a press announcement that they’re planning to change the iced drinks menu. I believe Pret quickly announced this to avoid further backlash in the press and more serious problems with ASA. The new drinks menu came in 2023 as watered down versions of iced drinks.
Pret became a laughing stock for many on social media with some adequately comparing Pret’s excuses of broken ice machines, or out of stock with McDonald’s infamous “broken ice cream machines” which got the U.S. government to start an investigation into this.
And this year’s iced drinks also get bad reviews from the get go!
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And on a side-note, regarding “best value” for customers in the subscription, sorry Clare Clough, but you know very well how the coffee subscription has damaged quality all around in Pret. Staff became exhausted, morales down, high staff turn-over, many more complaints on the bad coffee Quality etc. etc. etc.
The subscription was just a quick and regular money grab as well as data grab for Pret. Clive Schlee and Pano Christou themselves have said that Pret are late in the game of data collection. And Christou has learned from Pret’s sister company Panera in the States who have over 40 million customer data. The subscription was never a good deal for customers. And later press reports on the bad subscription went through the roof, so much so that the Telegraph went on a bad press for Pret spree that Pret supplied them with platters of sandwiches to appease the chief editor. How easily you can bribe the press now, with cheap sandwiches.
Just for info, I was the one who received the leaked video during the pandemic that I passed on to Vivienne Nunis from the BBC where she reported. And other issues staff pass on to me that I forward to the press including the Guardian, Times etc.
Clare Clough fits right into Pret with all the lies and false claims. And I’m sure she thinks she’s innocent and well meaning. Pret being short for pretentious.
Clare Clough, keep dreaming about becoming CEO of Pret.
UPDATE September 2025:
Clare Clough to step down.
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If a high ranking Pret staff steps down, there’s more to the story, especially if they don’t give a reason. Not the first time. Happened with Andrew Walker, who was UK MD before Pano Christou became MD, and there are insider rumours of Walker’s clash with former CEO Clive Schlee leading to Walker “leaving” Pret.
Andrew Walker later became CEO of EAT which then went downhill and was bought by Pret once JAB Holdings took over Pret.
And as Clare Clough recently had a child, she either wants to concentrate on her child(ren) or she isn’t as “committed” for Pret’s liking due to being a mother now. Wouldn’t surprise me.
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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 