Fri 14th Aug 2015 - Pret A Manger to pursue vegetarian store option Pret A Manger to explore option of converting existing site into dedicated vegetarian store following customer feedback: Pret A Manger is to explore the option of converting one of its existing sites into a dedicated vegetarian store. Chief executive Clive Schlee made the announcement today (Friday, 14 August) after nearly 10,000 people responded to his request for their views after seeing the company’s sales take a distinct shift towards vegetarian. He has also said the company will increase the number of vegetarian and vegan products in its shops, improve labelling on its vegetarian and vegan dishes more clearly, run a “call to arms” marketing campaign for veggie food next year and test a vegetarian fridge in one of its shops. In his latest blog he said: “The result was clear but close: 52% voted in favour of a special vegetarian fridge, versus 44% in favour of an exclusively vegetarian Pret and just 4% for the status quo. People were stimulated by the idea and the fact that a large high street retailer should put it out there. Their responses were full of good sense and a touching affection for Pret. Several themes came through clearly. Voters against a single vegetarian shop argued it wouldn’t help the vast majority of our customers. They warned us that it might not make commercial sense. Many people commented that isolating vegetarians did not feel right. There was a strong call to arms from vegans, a movement that is clearly growing in popularity. We learned our labelling could be clearer, that our shops sometimes run out of vegetarian products and that we need to bring back old favourites. We got a number of very useful recipe suggestions, several of them skillfully converting a vegetarian product to a vegan product with a minor tweak. I have been talking to our food and marketing teams about what to do and here’s our response: we will increase the number of vegetarian and vegan products in our shops; improve labelling to call out vegetarian and vegan dishes more clearly; run a ‘call to arms’ marketing campaign for veggie food next year; test a vegetarian fridge in one of our shops; explore converting an existing shop into a vegetarian shop. Thank you to the thousands of people who voted and sent us their views. The Pret chefs will be extremely busy devising exciting new veggie and vegan recipes. If you’ve got any great ideas for our menu, we’d love to know.”