Was Pret a Manger right to end its free coffee subscription?

Pret a Manger is ditching its “free” coffee subscription, which offered customers five-barista-made drinks a day for £30 a month. The sandwich chain (a lunchtime stalwart for many office workers across the UK) introduced the subscription in September 2020, but from September 2024, new and existing subscribers will instead receive half-price drinks for £5 a month, moving to £10 a month from 31 March 2025.

With the perk on its way out, how has it affected perceptions of Pret’s brand since it was introduced? YouGov data suggests that, despite positive early buzz, it hasn’t had a particularly large impact. A look at scores for the on-the-go lunch brand over the past four years (21 July 2020 – 21 July 2024) shows a downturn in Impression scores (which measure general sentiment) from 19.7 to 14.0 (-5.7).

Now, there are a few reasons why a chain like Pret might have suffered over the past few years in terms of public perception – the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home, the cost-of-living crisis – but if the brand’s leaders were hoping that the five-a-day coffee subscription would have a transformative effect on people’s general view of the brand, those hopes may have been dashed.

It's a similar story for other metrics: Quality scores have gone from 21.8 to 20.5 (-1.3) over the past four years, while Value for Money scores have deteriorated steeply - from 0.8 to -8.7 (-9.5). Again, we can’t say the subscription is directly responsible for any of this – Pret’s prices in general have risen considerably over the last few years – but we can say that it hasn’t improved the brand’s position in a period of belt-tightening and cost-cutting for consumers.

Finally, Satisfaction with Pret a Manger has declined over the past four years, with scores falling from 18.6 to 13.9 (-4.7), so customers are less happy with the brand than they were four years ago. Naturally, not everyone will have subscribed, so again, this doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on the five-coffees-a-day-for-£30 deal; it does, however, suggest that, at a time of rising prices, the brand might need to do more to win customers over and keep them.