Number of the Day
Pret A Manger’s Unlimited Coffee Gamble, by the Numbers
With office corridors vacant, the lunchtime chain hops on the subscription train
$9.99: That’s the cost of a monthly “Classic Coffee Pass” subscription from Pret A Manger at its 72 U.S. locations.
As urban corridors become ghost towns, lunchtime retailers are becoming increasingly creative. The British fast casual chain’s new pass gets you “unlimited” coffee, ice coffee, or tea (or you can upgrade for $19.99 a month for posher espresso variations). The concept, a company executive told the Wall Street Journal, emulates Netflix and other subscription entertainment models, whose popularity spiked during lockdown: “That’s really what we want to recreate with our coffee subscription.” Perhaps another less sexy inspiration comes from the food chain Panera, which introduced an $8.99 coffee subscription earlier this year, pre-pandemic.
The strategy may have a different payoff in the Covid-19 era: Pret sales are down 60% from last year, and it has closed dozens of locations. So perhaps luring caffeine fiends working from home with a bottomless cup gets them back into stores — and maybe picking up a chicken and mozzarella baguette along the way. You can bet that bigger coffee rivals like Dunkin and Starbucks will have an eye on this experiment, to see just how addictive consumers find it.
Coffee chains are as desperate for a boost these days as the rest of us.
