Leadership skills of the new CEO drive profits at Pret

Delegates at our AQA BUSSter course this week have been working through our new case study resource on sandwich chain Gambles - and then lo and behold a cracking article appears on the successful strategy being pursued by competitor sandwich chain Pret A Manger….

This Guardian interview is with CEO of Pret A Manger Clive Schlee.

The article and interview is absolutely packed with business studies terms and concepts - and is particularly useful for business strategy lessons. I highlighted the following points reading through a couple of times:

- The importance of customer service as a way to build customer loyalty (a source of competitive advantage in the highly competitive fast food market)

- A problematic international expansion

- Turnaround from losses in the early part of the decade after selling a stake to mcDonalds

- Targeting the key customer (in the case of Pret - the office worker who visits a store up to ten times per week)

- Very high staff turnover, despite strong financial and non-financial reward structures

- Store managers running their location as a profit centre