To think 4.70 for a pret sandwich is too expensive?

[WaltonOnNaze]

A sandwich. Not a baguette or flatbread etc. am sure they used to be about £3.50 not so long ago.

You pays your money, you takes your choice.

A factory-production line sandwich from the previous day and machine dispensed coffee from Tesco, or a fresh made sandwich with better ingredients and fresh coffee in a cafe where you can sit down and eat if you want. It's not comparing like with like.

Most of the extra Pret cost is service- paying humans to make your sandwich and coffee on the premises and provision of the cafe premises.

It’s inflation.

Loads of goods have nearly doubled in price, especially’luxury’ foods as shops struggle to keep down prices on the economy range and instead add lots to their luxury range.

Look at Charlie Bighams ready meals. £9.50!!! Used to be £6.95 a year or two ago!

@KatherineJaneway - I think mainly in the north west? I'm in Manchester and there's a few dotted around in the shopping precincts.

I go for quality over quantity. I don't need crisps and a drink with a meal deal. Pret is far superior to Gregs and the supermarkets. I'm surprised some people say there is no difference.

Nobody forced you to buy it I assume

I miss CB meals, used to have one every Friday. But I'm not paying £9.50 😱

You already pay more if you eat in though, don't you?

I think Pret put their prices up this week/new year...

Sometimes i treat myself on the way to the office and a latte, egg and bacon breakfast sandwich and plain croissant used to be £8.something and this morning it was £9.something

I guess this will stop my habit...

Agreed

Is that why you missed a "g" out of "Greggs"? You used 2 good quality ones instead of 3 medic ore ones?

Nobody forced you to buy it I assume

That's not the point. OP has noticed a large price increase & thinks it's expensive for what it is.

I have no idea what you're talking about other than I spelt Greggs incorrectly.

Is that why you missed how to spell mediocre 🙃

Early 2000's in the City of London. The Cannon Street branch was always rammed, then they were bought out by a company that promptly put the prices up and the shop was empty - the VFM of Benjy's being the whole point of why they were so busy.

Haven't read the whole thread but I was in a Pret yesterday (central London) and the only sandwich near £4.70 was £4.75 for the smoked salmon sandwich (which has always been more expensive than cheaper fillings). Tuna mayo was £3.40 and egg mayo £2.85. So the OP is talking bollocks. I see they didn't come back after their initial post - was this just an anti-Pret thread?

Thanks

Everything is more expensive. I reckon the price of everything has gone up by at least 20% in the last year.

Pret sandwiches are much better than the vast majority of packaged sandwiches imo, especially supermarket ones, which are tasteless. I don't think they are excessively expensive for what they are, to eat occasionally, but I certainly wouldn't buy one (or any other packaged sandwich) as my regular work lunch. I take in lunch from home. I live and work miles and miles away from the nearest Pret, but always choose them if there is a branch somewhere I'm travelling.

Jeez how little cheese / chicken are you putting in for it to cost 40p? Cheese is around 4 or 5 now for a smallish block. Would have to be 1 tiny slither for 40p. Same with chicken, 2 breasts are around £4, unless you go for the lowest mock chicken.

I don't know where you're buying your cheese but a standard 250 g block or pack of sliced proper cheese (the poster who's missing the obscure Swedish cheese could get Emmental in any supermarket as a substitute) is around £2/2.50 and you can get great lumps of cheddar for a fiver (counterintuitively, M&S are currently cheapest for these).

I'd say it probably costs around a third of the price charged by a sandwich shop to make the same thing at home and yes I do know that they have all the overheads, but the reality is that it's bloody expensive to buy prepared sandwiches, wherever you get them from, so unless this is your luxury of choice and you have the money, it's an easy win to just make your own.

I don't like fridge cold food, so I prefer one I made myself and carried around all morning anyway and seeing as you can't trust most of them not to gaslight you on the 'we call it butter but it's really shitty spread' issue then most times I'd rather do that anyway.

£4.60 is a massive mark up. They'd sell a lot more sandwiches if they kept the price down. They'll lose a lot of customers by being so greedy.

I'm not denying there's a big mark up, but Pret sandwiches aren't a smear of marg (bleurgh) and a bit of cheap crappy ham on some bread. If that's the kind of sandwich you want, don't go to Pret! They certainly wouldn't sell a lot more sandwiches to me by making them less nice to cut costs.

A chain like Pret would surely buy in bulk from a wholesaler, not a piddly little amount with the supermarket massive markup.

£4.60 is a massive mark up. They'd sell a lot more sandwiches if they kept the price down. They'll lose a lot of customers by being so greedy.

Pret is a business that needs to make money. I'm pretty certain that if they were likely to make more money by snatching less, the team of people they employ PURELY to make this kind of calculation, would have said so, and they'd be selling them for less.

It's bizarre that you think you know better than the people who know the business, the data and the economics of the sector and the company inside out and backwards.

Snatching? Charging.

I know all about greedy corporates and how they operate @saraclara