My thoughts: JAB Holdings Buys Pret A Manger
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2018
- A quick video discussing an interesting piece of industry news from this week.
For me, it was a chance to reassess Pret - not just their financials, their success, but also their business model and what makes them different. - บันเทิง
![fellow fellow - Proud [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9uZF7BlUQPE/mqdefault.jpg)
2 points:
Not incredibly boring at all!
Speed and quality of service is the next step up in specialty!
This week I waited 10 minutes for an under extracted V60 at a café that was almost empty and that had no batch brew alternative...
The challenge must be moving towards an increased speed of service, greater consistency and maintaining the quality of product! Easier said than done!
tacodias I think you're right and at the same time I think it may cause some people to focus on the speed rather than in the experience. I' the kind of customer who likes to take its time, I appreciate the time the Barista takes when brewing my coffee, for me that's the experience, not only the fact that someone is brewing coffee for you, but they are also investing their time! Of course, they're being paid to do so and there's when I don't see myself enjoying a place where they prepare my coffee super fast, so that they can get one more customer. I do understand, in the end it's all about money, and a business needs as many customers as possible to grow, but I'm not happy with that idea, less time from the Barista, more stress for the Barita, less experience for the customer, more customers to be served... That for me sounds like a bad idea, but... Let's wait and see how this business model positively or negatively affects the Specialty Coffee industry.
As a small coffee shop owner I had a time limit of 3 to 5 minutes to serve orders including sandwiches because I understood the value to the customers time. We had a drive thru as well so the pressure to make drinks and food was real!
Great videos, keep them coming!
Amazing video James! Certainly some interesting point to think about, I think the customer expects in binomial way, the quality of the product and the time it takes to get it/make it. Probably many café would think that fast paced banging coffee out the door would defeats the purpose of specialty! But I agree that time is the most important possession we have, therefore we should as an industry to aim to serve as quickly as possible and with the best quality as as well!
Great video. Valuing time is definitely something I think, we as a specialty coffee group need to re-evaluate. Just watched a great example yesterday in a specialty cafe (that has great coffee) where people walked in, saw the line, and walked out. We need to find ways to make sure that customer purchases, even when in a hurry. Keep up the great work James, hope to be by your shop in London on Monday. Cheers
I agree so much. I reckon there’s a temptation in our industry to be SO product focussed, as you said, that it becomes more about cultivating our ‘passion’ or ‘hobby’ than it does about giving the customer a warm, empathetic and efficient service, which is surely the reason they’re coming in the doors! We’ve found that having professionally trained chefs, hiring baristas who started in Costa and Starbucks, and streamlining our service style has brought in hundreds more customers. Even if they’re spending lots of time in your cafe, and so the speed of service is not essential, that time is their time, and we should honour that.
James, that was not boring at all- thankyou so much for your insights. As a barista who left the industry to become an accountant because I saw coffee as a "dead end" job, I have hopes of one day coming back to open my own coffee shop- and its content like this that helps me to connect the dots between coffee and business. Keep up the great work!
Great video James. @Sam, I am intrigued by your comment because I am also planning to start a coffee business. Would love to get in touch with you.
Sam Ting Can I get your email address?
Really enjoyed this video. Nice for someone to talk about these matters.
I love these James. Slowly working my way back to your older vids, and personally find this stuff a little more unique than reviews. But honestly all your vids are cool, keep up the good work.
Good business advice. Enjoying your videos James
Great video. Interesting inside regarding how much pressure there is on the customer time spent on transactions.
I appreciated this Jim!
Enjoying the videos James. Pret is different to the other big UK high street players where coffee is not the main focus. They do take it seriously to an extent as you say with the speed factor and weighing cappuccinos etc but that is outdated. 4 coffee suppliers from the beginning of Pret. Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Matthew Algie then Lincoln and York. The amazingly interesting bit for me is the array of businesses that JAB are purchasing from Peets to Kenco?? I was under the impression that when the markets last crashed JAB looked for a safe haven. I think they picked on commodities and with coffee being the 2nd largest traded commodity in the world they dipped their toe in the water big time. Where will it end?? JAB have now become the 2nd largest provider of coffee in the world. Your views on the coffee world are always insightful so please keep them coming!
Interesting video! Agree with you... many people continue to mess thinkin to run a business like it was an hobby or a question of self affirmation xD
Thanks keep these coming loving content.
Great video, thanks
Excellent video, as per usual. Thanks for sharing these insightful thoughts with us.
I'm guessing you might know this already and were just being funny, but in case not, dislikes are counted as engagement by TH-cam (which is a good thing), so while not helping you as much as likes, they are better than a view without a reaction. 😊
I think part of the problem with specialty that results in long waits is that we don't focus on systems like the larger chains do - consistently repeatable processes for producing a product. This not only results in slower service, it also results in inconsistencies across shifts, over time, etc. What James says is spot on - we need to pay more attention to things like this and bring a little bit of it to specialty.
More of this please!
Yes , great video. An interesting and pin sharp analysis ..... Certainly food for thought . Love to hear more
Very interesting! I'd like to see more like this.
Nice one James, most interesting point of view.
love this videos about business
Not in the UK anymore but Pret seem to be the only place pushing a quick filter coffee, last time I checked it was just a pound and did not taste terrible. Starbucks offer it too but I always felt like it was for those in the know and many times they don't have it ready - traditionally stores would have the standard blend and something else but now most have just one.
In the majority of places getting a brewed coffee usually takes longer than an espresso based one, those on the go could well be tempted by a batch brew drink.
They do SUPER well here in Hong Kong!
Interesting angle with time. I agree - valuable but there is something to be said about how that might interact with quality in peoples mind given how coffee is “crafted” in the minds of your customers. I dunno - if i am a rush i will order a filter on batch brew. Surely you can only go so fast, only fit so many baristas etc. I guess automation is the key to pret’s success.
Nice video!
I love specialty but I agree about the time. Once or twice an order has been forgotten and I've waited like 10 minutes before saying something... Perhaps I'm more patient than I ought to be but it also shows that we grow accustomed to long waits.
Efficient workflow is so important in busy coffee shops but it gets overlooked so often. It's always worth stress testing your setup after hours by sending through 20 mock orders in a timeframe relative to a busy morning and seeing how long it takes to get them all out. It can be really frustrating waiting for over 10 minutes for a coffee you know is going to be the tits but you're going to miss your bus or something.
Commuters have limited patience and instead of whining about it, it's worth seeing it from their perspective and striving to be as efficient as you can be. Not enough speciality shops do this I think.
Good point. Here in NYC Pret does best in neighborhoods like the Financial district or Midtown with large office buildings and people with timed lunch breaks. It’s the utilitarian end, not a delicious mean. I can’t see them as the leisure third place that most cafés are
@Late Night Girl What was the major issue working there?
The company I work for is owned by JAB holding, and i was very excited about the purchase at first. They are a huge conglomerate of numerous cafe style businesses. I was hoping they would implement more things from their more successful brands into ours. Overall it has stayed the same unfortunately, I feel like they had a huge opportunity to drive higher revenues for our company, but they decided to keep all of the brands entirely separate, rather than interchanging ideas from one brand to the next.
I enjoy "seeing behind the curtain". Please keep these coming. As an aside, Starbucks opened a new store nearby. OK great. New facilities. So, someone I know goes there at about 10 am. Orders a cup of coffee. He counts 7 employees (that he can see - management in the back?). It takes 5 minutes to get the brewed coffee. Specialized training without allowing for flexibility? Great for the breakfast/lunch rush? I would think management would still need flexibility even at those peak times. I guess I don't understand the coffee business.
Because I enjoy coffee, I find Mr. Hoffmann's coffee artistry enjoyable. While I can improve my french press technique, I will never attempt any of the professional barista creations. Similarly, I will never own a coffee shop. But, I find his discussion of the different business models as stimulating as caffeine.
As an amateur, I have observed a retiree sink $500,000 in a coffee franchise only to go out of business in 6 months because he put the store on the going-home-from-work side of the street instead of the going-to-work side.
I have also encountered "professionals" who took over a jettisoned Caribou Coffee location, concentrate on high-margin cappuccino based sweet drinks and serve tepid brewed coffee at 11 am that has been sitting in a vacuum pot for 3 hours. This may be the correct business model for their location. But, not for me.
I am confident that those working at Pret who disagree with Pret's model will use the experience to make a better choice for their next employment or to run a business better.
I LOVEEEE THESE M&A VIDEOS.
pret in america is a disaster but i still thank the Gods because it's hard enough to find healthful foods in america (but thats a whole other discussion...)
what do you think now? they've opened soooo many branches in central london, including veggie branches. and then covid....
Lita Bean think the veggie ones give vegan and vegetarians a go to spot. Pret is better than no pret in my book
Well said
I don't mind waiting for a good coffee so long as I can have a seat. Too many good coffee shops have very limited seating.
If you already go to specialist coffee shops you probably are OK with the wait. I get what James is saying though...I'm not so keen on waiting 2 or 3 minutes for an espresso after I've ordered. It's nice yeah, but it takes 30 seconds to drink....why wait 6 times that for it to be made? You can get excellent espresso in about 35 seconds in Italy. Yeah I know the change in roast has led to "tastier" espresso here but the average customer doesn't have the tasting practice to notice much difference so we're making people wait for the sake of the barista's geekiness.
OK, I generally prefer the coffee / gadget / travel / mail opening porn but this too was thought-provoking. I suppose places like Pret have ubiquity and prime commercial locations, as well as speed, on their side. I also suspect many people who seek out speciality coffee do so as much for the attendant rituals, the experience and the surroundings, as for the product itself. A couple of weeks ago I was in London and, on the back of your Four London Coffee Institutions video, visited Monmouth. The queue was initially offputting but perseverance paid off and I enjoyed and bought some really interesting coffee. The sweet spot of experience, quality, variety, price and convenience may be hard to find.
Incidentally, my TH-cam feed is currently recommending “Learn about Coffee Enemas” as something conceivably of interest to me after watching your videos. Any intention of covering this in a future video? A sort of coffee ‘cradle to grave thing’…
I would never step foot in one of there shops after poor Natasha's death and know many people that feel the same way.
The whole Natasha story is so stupid, as stupid as people are these days. I am very sorry for her death, however - if I know that I, or my kid is suffering from a severe allergy, I will simply not gonna eat out, just for the simple fact, that human factor can fail anytime or anywhere. If this would not happen in Pret, it could happen somewhere else in some other time. If I have a severe allergy, I will make my research about what I eat. They go and blame Pret now, even though Pret did not do anything illegal. It was not a legal requirement at the time, to display all the ingredients in the said food. When they were purchasing the food that killed her, they never asked about the ingredients, they did not make the research. They simply grabbed the item, and she ate it. That is highly and highly irresponsible, and pardon for being insensitive, but it is her own fault, or the fault of her parents that she died. It is not Pret's fault at all.
Love it
Not boring at all.
Sad little triangles called sandwiches
I used to work for McDonalds and even their rule was you had to be served within 90s
Could the raise of the salary and consequently an higher price of the goods gives a faster service assuming this would create a superstar baristas(focused also on quality and speed )far from the hipster stereotype??
Keep talking about this please
As a pret worker, the infrastructure makes it possible. At the speed of productivity, you do give up quality... Maybe the kitchen can keep up but it is impossible for all the coffees will match the standards...
Interesting, but... I don’t think specialty coffee (in London) can take many more hits to quality (Oops, I said it).
It’s taken me a year to reply to this, but the coffee I had today at Prufrock was hands down the best I’ve had in a coffee shop since returning to London. Really delicious and I didn’t want it to end. So yeah, Prufrock!
All these big numbers indicate the very worrying fact of the volume of people who actually like awful coffee. Today, i don't know why, i decided to buy a bag of espresso beans (and they have only big ones 859g) and it turned out to be disgusting, it was apparent as soon as i opened the bag - the aroma was repulsive.
What about the fact that Nestlé will spend $7.15 billion for the right to market Starbucks products from beans to capsules?
How would you target remote workers with specialty coffee?
I don’t mind about time. Unless you takes ages and give me awful coffee.
Specilaty beans become lemited
There's an interesting string of words in this video,
"considering what they sell is not particularly expensive"
Are we talking about the same pret a manger here? Is there even another highstreet chain which is more expensive than pret? Ignoring whether their product is good or bad I exclusively avoid them because of their astronomical prices.
im so glad pret a manger is not popular outside the uk. all the menu items are ridiculously expensive and taste AWFUL. its THE place for people who desire to look posh at the expense of everything else (similar to driving a range rover. what a piece of crap lol). walmart makes better sandwiches.
So far 3 people don’t care about your fragile ego James. 😩