Pret job cut fears following sales slump

Pret could be set to make job cuts as it’s been revealed that weekly sales have plummeted by 85% during the coronavirus crisis.

In a leaked video seen by the BBC, chief executive Pano Christou told staff that weekly takings had fallen to £3m, 15% of normal levels, and an announcement about the “job situation” would be made on 8 July.

“What will be the case is, on 8 July, we’ll be doing a broader communication to the teams, just talking through the initial work that’s been done on this, so things will start to become clearer from 8 July,” he said.

“I think globally we’ll need our sales to get to about 60% [of pre-crisis levels] to break even.”

“We’re trying to aim to the month of September to get to that 60% but clearly there is a lot of work going into that from the team, but at the same time we’re so dependent on footfall coming back into the cities to drive our sales up.”

Encouraging staff to drive up sales in the next few weeks, UK managing director Clare Clough added that the business was in the midst of “quite intense negotiations” with its 300 landlords.

Clough also revealed that in a recent week, the business’ US stores took close to $100,000 in sales, a 98% drop from pre-crisis levels, whilst UK sales were currently around -86%.