Pret A Manger's secret ingredients This is a Hot Chef course at the Pret Academy, where Osbourne is one of 10 staff who prepare training programmes and run sessions for Pret workers from across the country. The aim is straightforward: to police hygiene and ensure that the product is of a uniform standard. But there is something more undefinable in the air, too - a sense that a set of values is being communicated, and that they apply whether you are greeting a customer, re-stocking a fridge or simply folding a tortilla. Think about the trainees in your shops and think about how they like to learn," Osbourne says, and points towards one of the women in the group. 'I would love to be trained by you, for example, because you're so smiley and so nice... Talk to them about using perfect ingredients and where they come from. Where does our chicken come from? It's British. The peppers? From Spain. Tortillas - they date from Mayan culture and they used to be made between two rocks. Make people enthusiastic about the food. If BLTs and arabica coffee beans are what fuel Pret's customers, enthusiasm - in dizzying quantities - is what propels the company. What began as a one-off sandwich shop in Westminster, founded in 1986 by two college friends, Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham, is now an international fast-food business, with 41 shops in the US, 12 in Hong Kong and, since January, one in Paris, the sandwich range now augmented by soups, sushi, salads, wraps and puddings. In Britain it has 240 shops, a tiny number compared with the 1,200 McDonald's, 650 Starbucks and 1,300 Costas against which it competes in our increasingly uniform high streets, shopping centres, stations and airports. What sets Pret apart, it would say, is a commitment to fresh, healthy food (every shop has its own kitchen and there is no sell-by date on anything), and an obsession with speedy service. But there's something else too: they call it the 'Pret Buzz," which every customer should feel within seconds of entering, and which is principally to do with the people who work there. Pret's in-house literature makes plain what the criteria for recruitment are: 'We only employ people who are friendly and lively... people who are good-humoured by nature. To support this philosophy, every Team Member - Pret's entry-level rank - is issued with a little book of 'Pret Behaviours," applicable to any job in the company. The three core behaviours are Passion, Clear Talking and Team Working, and every page of the booklet is set out with three columns headed 'Don't want to see," 'Want to see" and 'Pret Perfect!," which function like a human resources-inspired version of the irregular verb game ('I go the extra mile, you cope well with pressure, he's just here for the money"). With Clive Schlee, Pret's chief executive since 2003, I take a tour of five shops within half a mile of the company's London HQ, near Victoria station. It's a walk-through, at high speed, that he must have conducted many times before, but that doesn't make him any less observant of detail. 'The first thing I look at," he says, 'is whether staff are touching each other - are they smiling, reacting to each other, happy, engaged? Look, she's just touched her colleague - squeezed her arm. If I see hands going up in the air, that's a good sign. I can almost predict sales on body language alone. He is looking, too, at how well stocked the fridges are, whether everything is clean and how quickly the queues are moving across the expanse of open floor known as the 'tennis court" ('It's a myth that the British like queuing - Pret is obsessed with transaction time"); but everywhere we go, it's his conversations with animated managers and team leaders that stand out. One of his managers, Jo, in charge of a branch opposite the Home Office, is greeted with a kiss to the cheek and asked how the lunchtime trade is moving. She describes a 'work hard, play hard" environment and explains why an upbeat team matters. 'It's important to have a couple of noisy staff at the front," she says. The authenticity of being happy is important, customers pick up on that. I tell new staff, I don't care what you say to customers as long as you're friendly. Mild flirting is clearly not prohibited. The staff manual tells staff to 'use personal phrases that you are comfortable with and treat customers as if they are guests in your own home. This is nothing so glib as a 'Have a nice day" culture; this is a philosophy that runs much deeper. Fast-food jobs have a bad name in this country. 'McJob," a term first used in 1986, the year of Pret's opening, is now in the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as 'An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp one created by the expansion of the service sector." Understandably, McDonald's itself has been trying to correct this impression ever since, with successes: its graduate training scheme; the fact that it helps staff gain nationally recognised qualifications, from apprenticeships to foundation degrees; that it is one of the Sunday Times's '25 Best Big Companies to Work For. But Pret would lay claim to be doing the most on the high street to combat the evil trinity of low pay, lack of stimulation and no prospects. Everyone applying for a Pret job is assessed against the three core Pret behaviours and, if accepted, is sent to a shop for a trial day. At the end of that day, the rest of the staff in the branch vote on whether to keep them; if they say yes, they will welcome the new member of the team; if they vote no, the applicant gets a day's wages and a polite thanks but no thanks. Those accepted begin a 10-day training in hygiene, safety and the Pret way, after which, if various tests are passed, they graduate as Team Members; there is then a further 10-week training period in every aspect of what goes on in the kitchen and at front of house, which leads to graduation as a Team Member Star. Thereafter, a Star can become a Hot Chef, a Barista (coffee expert) or Team Member Trainer; then Team Leader, Assistant Manager and General Manager. Everyone who has completed the 10-day training is eligible for a weekly bonus, awarded on the basis of a report submitted by a mystery shopper. Lots of retailers use mystery shoppers - members of the public who assess the service they receive - but Pret is unusual in employing them to visit every one of its branches, every week, and linking their visits to rewards. If a branch meets all of the mystery-shopper criteria, the entire staff gets a bonus of £1 for every hour worked that week. What's interesting about this is that it is a reward for service rather than a shop's takings; nobody gets the bonus if the mystery shopper meets someone who is curt with them and then marks the shop down, so maintaining the Pret Buzz has a direct relationship to one's wage packet. And there are plenty of other incentives, too: if the mystery shopper has had outstanding service from an individual and names them on the questionnaire, they get an extra £50 cash bonus; and any shop recognised to have a 'Star Team" gets a wad of cash to spend on a team outing. That is in addition to Friday night drinks once a month, quarterly events for groups of shops and two enormous parties a year for the entire company. As Andrea Wareham, Pret's director of people, says, 'If you can't dress up in costume twice a year for a party, Pret's not for you. Pret says it tries to pay above the market rate (the starting salary is £7.25 an hour with bonuses; the UK minimum wage for over-21s is £6.08 an hour). The average salary, with bonuses, of assistant managers is £27,150, and of general managers, £36,650; the latter get private medical insurance and 33 days" holiday a year. As a result of the training, promotion prospects and benefits, Schlee says, the retention rate is good for the industry: 'The average turnover of people is 60 per cent in 12 months - that means people stay an average of 20 months. We have a loyal spine. There's a sense of family that Pret gives you and there's an unspoken contract - Pret does more than it should, and staff work harder than they need to. All of this raises interesting questions about who wants to work for Pret A Manger and who is hired. The first thing a Pret customer is likely to note about the Buzz, certainly in the London shops, is that it is created by foreigners. While branches outside London are about 40 per cent British, the proportion of UK staff across the company is only 18 per cent. The number of nationalities working for Pret is currently 106, with Poles, at 13 per cent, Colombians, 10 per cent, and Italians, seven per cent, the best represented. Chris Grayling, the employment minister, has certainly noticed this - he said last November that he thought it 'unacceptable" that a branch of Pret appeared to be entirely staffed by foreigners at a time of high unemployment - and Boris Johnson, too, has remarked on the absence of 'native Londoners" behind the tills. Although everyone speaks English to each other at Pret, Stephen Osbourne's Hot Chef class of 13 - 11 women, two men - at the Pret Academy contains three Poles and one each from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Algeria, Brazil, Argentina, Lithuania and Bangladesh; the 13th, Abi, is British, though she was born in Ethiopia. They have been with the company for between six and 18 months. At the end of the session, I ask how many of them are in their first job in Britain. Three hands go up. How many feel they have made real friends at Pret, with whom they socialise? Twelve. And how many of them have university degrees? Seven. London is clearly different from the rest of the country; it is a magnet for young people from all over the world seeking opportunities and fun that their own countries can't provide, and there are thousands of jobs in the service industries that they are prepared to take. Perhaps, with their enthusiasm and determination, they edge out willing Brits; or is it that many Brits simply aren't willing and can't hide that fact? Wareham thinks that preconceptions about the retail food sector may be to blame: 'I do think that if people saw how you can move through the company, more would apply. But Googling 'job" and 'Pret" brings up, in addition to the company website, an amusingly misspelt but plausibly well-informed page headed 'How to get a job at Pret a Manger!!!," possibly translated from Italian, where you can read the following: 'If you are british you won't get a job!!! (Unless you apply for any Head Office vacancie or you live in Essex, Scotland or North England. Generally speaking you have less than a 9% chances to get a job in London, because Pret does NOT want to employ british as they complain alot). Schlee says it is unfair to criticise Pret A Manger for the number of foreigners it employs: 'Pret has high standards and needs the best people from the widest possible pool. We would love to employ more Brits, and I hope they will apply. Whether or not Britons are sniffy about applying, many of the foreigners are hugely overqualified for a sandwich shop. They have adjusted their ambitions in working for Pret, in a way that some Britons are perhaps not prepared to, as those seven degrees on the Hot Chef course suggest. We have vets, solicitors, lawyers, people with two degrees, MBAs working at Pret," Wareham says. If we have a vacancy for, say, a graphic designer, or in payroll, HR, finance, IT, nine times out of 10 we can fill it from within. Those who come to work at Hudson's Place, Pret's HQ, where 140 staff occupy two floors, enter an environment that is very revealing of the company's sense of itself. On the one hand, there is a generic dotcom start-up feel to the offices - open plan, exposed ventilation systems, Polaroids of the team in reception, no ties, and a 'Passion Room" that functions as an informal meeting place and canteen, where on 'Teamwork Tuesdays" staff gather for a buffet lunch and a chat. This is the side of Pret that embraces a laidback, American West Coast style of teambuilding, but underpinning the business is a much more no-nonsense English ethos that derives in large part from the Old Harrovian co-founder Julian Metcalfe. Although Pret has been owned since 2008 by Bridgepoint, a private equity firm - before them, McDonald's had a 33 per cent stake between 2001 and 2008 - Metcalfe remains a guiding spirit in his role as consultant on matters of style and food. His messages appear on walls and sandwich boxes, and Schlee is quick to point out 'Julian words": so chefs 'get cracking" in the kitchens; there is talk of what happens to 'leftovers"; references to 'proper" food are very Julian. Some of Pret's staff rules would not look out of place in a prep school prospectus - as well as 'smart" blue jeans, shop staff must wear 'black polishable shoes... you should also have no visible piercings or offensive tattoos and your hair should be kept tidy during the shift." Opposite the Passion Room is an honours board naming the best shops and managers that could comfortably accommodate the names of first XI cricket captains. Schlee, who is 52 and a product of Rugby and University College, Oxford (a first in modern history), is instinctively in tune with this spirit. He managed Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchises in North America and Asia Pacific before he was introduced to Metcalfe in 1998, became his partner in Itsu, the sushi chain Metcalfe had set up a year earlier, then moved to Pret A Manger. He has, therefore, had several decades on the front lines of the fast-food industry; but there is also something of the benevolent headmaster about him, and when senior people at Pret talk about 'doing the right thing," they mean a set of standards that Metcalfe and Schlee are thought to embody. It is clear from our tour that Schlee enjoys leading his big, international family, and not only because a succession of attractive young managers greet him with a kiss on the cheek. He has been to plenty of Pret weddings (as trainer Stephen Osbourne, who met his girlfriend in the company, says with a grin, 'There's a lot of love in Pret") and went to two abroad last year. 'Then I meet the parents," Schlee says, 'and sometimes they're a bit annoyed that we've stolen their daughters." Is all of this too good to be true? As well as disapproval of its foreign intake, Pret has attracted criticism in newspapers for the claims it makes about its food. The Daily Mail, in particular, has criticised the salt and calorie content of Pret sandwiches and soups, questioning the idea that they are any healthier than a burger, and there have been questions asked in the past about the company's importing of produce - a slight parallel to the arguments about staffing - though Pret's website is scrupulous in explaining exactly where everything comes from. Criticism is perhaps to be expected, given the holier-than-thou nature of some of Pret's copy­writing. But Nicky Fisher, the head of sustainability, is stout in her defence of the company's values in relation to sourcing food, healthy eating, waste disposal and the company's contribution to society. 'We're a bunch of like-minded people who want to do the right thing," she says. 'It's not "green-washing," there's no way we could spout on about stuff that we don't actually do. I think if we stopped doing things like using pole- and line-caught tuna, for example, we'd get slated. We're trusted, like John Lewis or Waitrose, to do the right thing. Pret has always given away the food it can't use - as Fisher says, 'Our first shop was then, and is now, a bit of a hotspot for rough sleepers" - and more than 95 per cent of shops now distribute food to the homeless at the end of each day. A Pret Foundation Trust was set up in 1995 to help support the food runs and other charity projects; 10p from the sale of every tuna baguette, Love bar and Lemonaid drink goes towards it. The Foundation also funds an apprenticeship scheme for the homeless and ex-offenders, which gives three months of training and the promise, all being well, of a job afterwards. We have given over 70 homeless people the chance to get back into the workplace and break the cycle of homelessness," Schlee says. We give them a travel card, clothing allowance and a mentor to help them make the adjustment. The majority are British citizens and they are proving to be excellent members of our team. A few days later there is a graduation ceremony at the Pret in St Pancras station. Rachel, aged 20 (British), will become a Front of House Leader if she passes the scrutiny of Manuel (Italian), who is the manager of a branch nearby, just outside King's Cross station. They both have interesting stories about how they found their way to Pret, and Manuel's starts with a romance. He is from Carrara, home of the marble quarries, and spent 10 years in the Italian navy. Having set out to become a lawyer, he had to leave his studies for 12 months" national service but loved the navy so much he stayed, rising to the rank of sergeant. Four years ago, he was representing the navy at a trade fair in Genoa and met a young British woman, Jo, who was working on the Skoda stand. They fell for each other and began a relationship, but she had a son, then aged two, so felt she couldn't move to Italy. Instead, Manuel came to London to be with her, and applied for a string of IT and security jobs when he arrived. One day, he left an interview that hadn't gone well and went into the King's Cross Pret: 'There was a lovely Italian girl on the till, we started chatting and she asked what sort of job I was looking for. Anything, I said. My English is not so well. She told him about Pret, he applied for a job and he started as a Team Member in June 2008. 'I didn't ask about the pay - I just wanted to work. But they offered me a career straight away. Later that year, Jo joined Pret too, and she is now an assistant manager at St Pancras. Today, Manuel is marking Rachel on her performance at front of house, where she is making sure service is smooth and that the shop looks immaculate. She has been with Pret for three and a half years, starting in Chester, then Liverpool, and has been in London for 10 months, arriving as a manager on duty, who stands in for leaders or managers when they are absent. She first worked part-time for Pret while studying fashion in Liverpool but left her course because she didn't like the theoretical side. 'This way, I feel I'll get where I want to be," she says. 'The work is repetitive but not in a bad way - you've got interaction, it's not like sitting at a desk typing the same old stuff. The team breaks off from serving for a moment to gather behind the tills. Rachel has passed and will graduate as Front of House Leader; next she can aim for the post of Assistant Manager, which will mean more courses, tests and assessment. Manuel brings out a bottle of fizz and announces her success, to a chorus of whoops and clapping, and slightly puzzled smiles from customers. She will get a pay rise next week, and there's a party to look forward to, because Rachel has £1,000 to spend with her colleagues after a mystery shopper gave them a Star Team award. But for now it's back to the daily business of being passionate about food, customers and service. No additives, no funny business; just a commitment to delivering an authentic Pret Buzz.