- 2 days ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00This was back in 94 when I got my knighthood, the atmosphere was just magic, it was amazing,
00:10an amazing experience. Sir Michael Darrington is a knight of the realm and one of Britain's most
00:18successful entrepreneurs. This letter arrived, it was very official looking and inside it said
00:24we're offering you, would you accept a knighthood? I couldn't believe it. Sir Michael was a business
00:32visionary, a man whose decades of hard work contributed to the British economy. We'd be ready
00:39to go and take on anyone in any way because our products were jolly good. If you want to pay twice
00:43the price for something not as good that's up to you. And Sir Michael's field? Sandwiches and other
00:52food to go. It's a vast business which now has its own awards. A very warm welcome to the 27th
01:01sammies, the annual sandwich and food to go industry awards. In this room one man's cheese and pickle is
01:11another man's crayfish and rocket. It's an elite club. The contents of our sandwiches are juicy,
01:20our attitude to mayonnaise is liberal. But back in the day when people sat down to eat proper meals
01:27with a knife and fork, sandwiches weren't really a thing outside of the home. In the 1970s no one
01:34could imagine that they'd become a multi-billion pound industry and revolutionise how we eat. I mean really
01:42it was just in the dark ages. There is no quite nice. It's either incredible or it's awful. There was a
01:53realisation that this is going to be a big industry and we all need to be part of it. Soon the race was
01:59on. Who was going to be first to cash in on this billion pound butty bonanza? I don't think there
02:06was any sandwich competition on the high street when Pratt started. A lot followed. A huge amount followed.
02:12The modern British sandwich had aristocratic beginnings taking its name from the 18th century
02:27fourth Earl of Sandwich. Gambling at cards late one night his lordship demanded beef slapped between
02:34two slices of bread and the British love affair with the sandwich began.
02:38But after that initial moment of genius the sandwich was only ever seen at home or part of a
02:47kids packed lunch. There was only one place that most people normally bought a sandwich and that was
02:53on a train. But the British Rail Sandwich was a national joke, ridiculed for being hard, dried out and curly.
03:02You've an extremely difficult job. Do people ever make fun of you? Of course they do.
03:08Do you know why? Well we have a ready-made thing for comedians to have a go at.
03:15We think it's very unfair but there we are we have to live with it.
03:19When you say you've got a ready-made thing for people to go at what do you mean by that the curly sandwich?
03:23The curly sandwich.
03:24Hacked off at being a national joke the British Rail Board took an extraordinary decision.
03:38They hired a woman to join the board.
03:40Oh sorry. Is it all right? It's very low. I'll never get out again but I'm in.
03:47This agenda for the chef's meeting tomorrow is a disaster.
03:51Prue Leith ran a successful high-end restaurant and cookery school.
03:57But could she make passengers part with their cash for a pre-packed sarnie?
04:02There was only one real choice. It was cheese.
04:06I remember saying to the chaps who made the sandwiches,
04:10you know, this is so boring. Can't we have some other sandwiches?
04:14But he said, this is Britain's most popular sandwich. And I said, well of course it is.
04:19British Rail have cafeterias all over the country and there's nothing else.
04:24I finally persuaded them that I could do a little test on Paddington Station and I made sandwiches
04:31all different flavours. Rather oddly we had sardines and spinach. We had salami sandwich which I
04:39thought was quite modern at the time. And we had different breads. They weren't all just plain white bread.
04:48I walked around the station to see which row of sandwiches disappeared first.
04:54And I was terrified that these blasted cheese sandwiches, which were on there as well,
04:59would win the day. And then I'd have no argument.
05:04But in fact, they were popular enough for everybody to be convinced that perhaps we should widen the
05:11choice. So I've always been credited with British Rail sandwich.
05:15I think the railway sandwich was about the only thing people could get to eat. And it was very
05:28portable. And you know, you could take it in your bag and eat it a couple of hours later.
05:32We never really had competition for customers for sandwiches on the railways. We had this captive
05:42audience. But if we did have competition, it would have been Marks and Spencer's.
05:47Marks and Spencer were about to accidentally enter the unglamorous and low-profit world
05:53of the 1980s pre-packed sandwich. They just didn't know it.
05:58In 1980, a flagship branch of M&S in Croydon started selling pre-made sandwiches inside the store coffee
06:05shop. Nothing fancy. Simple flavours like egg and cress for 43p a pop. Fresh sandwiches to sit and eat
06:13with a cup of tea. The woman who'd been asked to give them the M&S touch was a 19-year-old product
06:20developer called Deborah Reinert. I look back on the career I've had in food with great affection.
06:26I've had some wonderful opportunities. Like most things, success is often about timing.
06:37The inspiration for the sandwich, they really were the classic afternoon tea flavours
06:42that you would find in an afternoon tea offer, which they thought would then resonate with the customers.
06:50There was an egg mayonnaise, a cheese and tomato, a ham salad and a salmon and cucumber.
06:57It was a big responsibility. If we got it right, it could be rolled out to the rest of the M&S estate.
07:05Deborah's sandwiches were selling, but not massively and not every day. Sometimes they'd have a fair few
07:11leftover, which is when Deborah and her team made a discovery. We were measured very carefully on the
07:16profitability of the Croydon coffee shop and one of the things that made a dent in that was if sandwiches
07:23were wasted at the end of the day. Because we had made too many one day, somebody said,
07:29why don't we sell the leftover sandwiches in the food hall, not from the coffee shop?
07:33We were selling 800 to 1000 a day. It was surprisingly successful.
07:41Amazingly, cold sandwiches were selling like hot cakes and Deborah had another flavour up her sleeve,
07:47the most exotic for its time.
07:54The prawn and mayonnaise sandwich came about because we wanted to offer something that was quite
07:59aspirational as well as delicious. Very, very simple. One or two little scrapes of the mayonnaise.
08:10Every ingredient had to work its way right to the edges of the sandwich and every sandwich had to be
08:15consistent. It might look simple today, but Deborah's prawn mayonnaise was unheard of in a supermarket
08:22and boosted early sales. To actually have a prawn sandwiched
08:26to yourself for lunch time was quite a treat and actually offered them something that you wouldn't
08:32normally have in a sandwich at home. Sandwiches were becoming a real money spinner,
08:40but if they were ever truly going to take off, they needed one thing, a much longer shelf life.
08:46This is when a genius called Alan enters the story.
08:5082 was a watershed. That was the year our business was modernised. We were not going to be compared
08:58to the British Rail Sandwich.
09:05It's the early 1980s, a time of major change. The Falklands War, the Iranian embassy siege and the
09:13invention of the M&S prawn mayonnaise sandwich. A sandwich that quickly became the British Prime
09:19Minister's favourite. Marks and Spencer knew they were onto something. People's habits were changing
09:26and the lunch hour was becoming a thing of the past. M&S had launched an increasingly popular selection of
09:33pre-packed sandwiches. But they had a problem. They only stayed fresh for up to four hours, limiting the
09:41potential for greater profits. It took a young food technologist to see the solution.
09:48It was a great startup idea, but it was a hugely manual operation and done in small batches.
09:59Alan Spate thought it might be possible to supersize the operation by making M&S sandwiches in one
10:06single factory and delivering them nationwide. But time was the major problem. The sandwiches would be
10:13hard by the time they arrived. To make Marks and Spencer more dough, Alan had to change the bread.
10:24Bread clearly goes through a number of changes during its early keeping life,
10:30one of which is drying out. If it's not sealed. If you add ingredients such as salads and tomatoes and so on,
10:37you're adding water to it. So the bread acts like a sponge in the middle, but around the edges,
10:42that is drying out. Yeah. So very quickly, the dynamic of the sandwich changes.
10:50Alan became obsessed with creating a loaf that M&S could use to create high quality,
10:55but long-lasting sandwiches. I was at various bread research associations. Eventually,
11:02I was invited to go to Allied Bakery's. Alan's big challenge was to try and solve
11:09the imperfections normally found in mass-produced bread. This is a sandwich loaf, just bought
11:18this morning on the high street. It's not terribly high quality from what I can see.
11:23The first problem was moisture. How easily the bread would let things soak in.
11:30You've got a wonderful development here that the bakers call handbagging, where the actual lid has
11:37come away from the body of the loaf. And you've also got a hole there. A piece of lettuce, a tomato,
11:44would have an inherent amount of moisture free, which would immediately go into the bread and probably
11:50would create a hole and actually reduce its keeping quality. The objective was really to try and
11:58eliminate those physical defects. Working with Allied Bakery's scientists,
12:03Alan discovered the key to making bread that could resist moisture. The first step was to use flour
12:10made with a different type of wheat. We would have Canadian flour, which is significant. The sub-arctic
12:16conditions create not only a high protein content in the in the flour, but also a high quality protein.
12:26The next step was creating a denser dough that didn't have any holes.
12:30We would have a lidded tin. We would have four pieces of dough in that tin. So the texture was more uniform,
12:40and the lidded tin gave you the geometric shape that you wanted for sandwich making.
12:47There we go. So that's physically a pretty clear shape for sandwich making.
13:09Using a variety of M&S fillings, Alan began testing the new loaves to see how long they could really make
13:15the sandwiches last. To the outsider, Marks and Spencer people seem nuts about quality. At any moment of
13:23the working day, they are testing and retesting their products. What I would call the end-of-life eating
13:28was still like a fresh sandwich. It didn't lose moisture so quickly to the atmosphere. It didn't lose it into
13:37the packaging. Instead of just four hours, Alan's test sandwiches with the new loaf stayed fresh for
13:43almost four days. It's really the recipe and the protein content. I'd uninvented the British
13:52Whale sandwich, if you want.
14:01It's quite pleasant, I must say. And it looks good. No holes, no handbags. Could be something to go forward.
14:10Alan presented his four-day-old sandwiches to M&S's deputy chairman, Michael Sacker.
14:18That was the moment.
14:22He proceeded to eat down the road. He said, when have these been made? I said, a few days ago.
14:31He said, a few days later. And he came up to me and pronounced them fantastic.
14:40In just three months using Alan's new bread, M&S went from 800 sarnies a day to almost 50,000.
14:48Everyone was happy, including Deborah, as her prawn mayonnaise creation was still number one.
14:56By the mid-80s, M&S's success was beginning to attract attention.
15:01Sue Bradbrook was a manager in a pioneering lunchtime team that knew the locations of
15:15their stores could give them an edge.
15:17When we launched, we always saw M&S as our main competitor. I think one of the reasons that we
15:25thought we could compete was the locations we had, because we had so many stores in London. But in
15:32addition, Boots is on the high street. Boots was where the offices were. Boots were determined to take
15:40M&S on at the sandwich game, even if that meant taking a hit to their own profits.
15:47M&S had already been in the market for quite a while and they also had a great perception of
15:54great quality, great tasting foods. And so when we used to develop our sandwiches, we always used to
16:00put 10% more filling in and we sold them for 10% less than them in an effort to compensate for that.
16:06Boots' move into the sandwich business hadn't gone unnoticed by Marks & Spencer.
16:13We were very aware that everybody else was going to jump on that bandwagon of sandwiches because it was
16:20becoming so successful. One of the ways that M&S kept ahead and maintained pole position was through
16:27quality, quality, quality.
16:29Every product you're getting immediate sales feedback. Every week we used to do taste evaluations
16:37blind against their sandwiches and we discovered that our sandwiches were coming out best.
16:43We knew we had quality. We were always very conscious of making sure that our fillings were
16:49really top notch. But major retailers were just one half of the Sarnie story. The industry split into
16:58two businesses. Supermarkets were the kings of high volume but in the 80s another side to the market
17:05emerged. The independent sandwich shops. Like fine Savile Row tailors these masters of flavour could cater to
17:18any taste making bespoke high-end sandwiches in front of their well-heeled customers.
17:24That's the most minor noise.
17:34Phil Brown made millions from his own sandwich business, Philpots.
17:42So this is my office. It looks messy but I know where most things are. He's probably quite interested in this.
17:54Which was our biggest, most expensive and I, in my view, best shop. We got sandwich bar of the year with it.
18:05But his inspiration came from a London sandwich bar called Burley's who were selling their sarnies to posh city bankers.
18:13I walked into the shop and I got a tingle in my tum. This is stunning.
18:25Everything about it, stunning. The service, the oak floors, the lighting. He had beautiful farmhouse cheddar.
18:34But he had brie de mou and crispy bacon which no one had done before.
18:39I mean it was just exquisite. The prices were pretty fabulous too. But of course, Big Bang had arrived by then and the city was booming.
18:50With customers willing to pay the equivalent of eight quid a sandwich in today's money,
18:54the luxury sarnie market had no shortage of 80s entrepreneurs who fancied a slice.
19:00A sandwich is an experience. It's got to be like a five napkin sandwich.
19:05In 1982, Frank Boltman wanted in on this upmarket sandwich action.
19:14His posh croissants and sandwiches became an instant hit.
19:18One of Britain's all-time favourite snacks is the egg mayonnaise.
19:23It became Frank's signature sarnie as well as a classic supermarket offer.
19:27It doesn't make my taste buds dance. It doesn't make me go, I've got to have another bite of that. It was fantastic.
19:41There's nothing really memorable about the flavour.
19:49Frank claims his version is in a different league to any supermarket's offering.
19:54The quality of the ingredients are important because my passion for quality creates a desire from the customer.
20:03His secret is taking these classic fillings and supercharging the flavour.
20:08Nothing's better than somebody else's idea. Once you get somebody else's idea, make it better.
20:15Improve on the quality, add a different ingredient here and there, where it works,
20:20and then we're going to see what other ideas you've got that I can nick.
20:26Squirt of mayonnaise. Always use a good quality mayonnaise. Quality, value and satisfaction.
20:35And then I mix salad cream in with it. Salad cream because of the vinegar and the sugar
20:41that gives it a lovely, yes please, I'll have some more taste about it.
20:47By 1984 there were three French francs, pulling in £50,000 a week between them.
20:53This is going to be a tasty sandwich, something a little bit more modern, a take on an everyday favourite.
21:02And there are your sandwiches.
21:04The independent sandwich bars were rising nicely, but in 1986 major change was in the air.
21:17Two chaps called Julian and Sinclair entered the food on the go market.
21:21Their genius was to combine the luxury quality of made-to-order sandwiches with the grab-and-go convenience of the supermarkets.
21:31We were petrified of them coming, thinking that they're going to really impact the business.
21:37Its design was cool, metallic and modern. A yuppies paradise.
21:42By 1985 the sandwich world was a peaceful place. Supermarkets sold convenient pre-packed sarnies and
22:00independent shops were doing a strong trade with their own posh, freshly made breads and fillings.
22:06But it was about to be thrown into chaos by a new kid on the block.
22:14Pret-a-manger would combine posh and convenient in one package.
22:19Everything was made on the premises in the morning, but every sandwich was made by an individual person.
22:24Knowing high-end was the way ahead, they even played opera in one of their first shops to promote their posh sandwiches.
22:36It was all part of what gave them their unique identity.
22:39The prototype was like, wow. I mean, it had these metal floors, all the staff and crazy-ass hats and bandanas to the side.
22:48I mean, it was hip. It had to be cool. We all wore jeans. How cool is that?
22:52The cool new chain needed a range of fresh sandwiches to match their cutting-edge brand.
23:01That task fell to a young, self-taught food developer called Nelly Nicholls.
23:06Good. I'm going for a second bite.
23:11My obsessions are quality. I can't bear bad food. I can't bear bad sandwiches.
23:19The early days of Pratt were extremely experimental. We were cutting new ground. It wasn't happening anywhere else.
23:26The way we were putting ingredients in was not so formulaic that everything was exactly the same.
23:34So by using seasoning and herbs and the way that you put sauces in, you managed to create something that was a real experience.
23:44We would think up ideas and we would try them out. And if they worked, we'd keep them. And if they didn't, we got rid of them.
23:51Simple is always best. You can make a really incredible tomato sandwich with a vine tomato and some salt and pepper.
24:02Nelly had a laboratory and they would just make loads and loads of sandwiches.
24:06So she was always tinkering around alchemy, I suppose you'd call it. Nelly's alchemy.
24:11Pratt had opened up near our shop, about 20 doors down. They were very, very good at what they did and they were very brave to market the products they did on a self-service basis because the public weren't naturally used to self-service in a sandwich shop.
24:33Things were about to become even less comfortable for the competition as Pratt created one of their most iconic sandwiches.
24:42M&S had started selling manufactured prawn sandwiches. Everybody loves prawns. If something sells really well, it's great to try and give it a brother or a sister.
24:55Crayfish is interesting. Crayfish are super popular. They're a kind of elevation of the prawn. They're not going as far as lobster, but they are a really exciting step up from a prawn.
25:11So crayfish became the new prawn. Crayfish probably needed to have an exciting partner and Peppery Rocket seemed like a good one.
25:25You have to put actually quite a lot in to even be able to see it, but it is a great ingredient.
25:31When Pratt first did crayfish, it just became a kind of overnight sensation and then literally the entire industry copied.
25:40Pratt's service depended on high quality plus convenience. Speed was crucial and they wanted to serve every customer within 90 seconds.
25:53Ewan Stickley was a top-level manager for Pratt and part of the team that created its first major successes.
26:00I love it. If you want great sandwiches, you've got to have great systems and attention to detail. That's paramount.
26:07Of course, everything was made on the premises in the morning. So literally everything, croissants, everything.
26:13Salmon was cooked off. Chicken was cooked off. Everything was sliced there. Everything was made fresh in the actual store in the day.
26:20Packaged, put on the shelf. Scoops, slices and scales. It was incredibly systemized.
26:26And that was the beginning of the kind of, I think, ensuring that wherever you went, the standards were consistent.
26:32So you start at six in the morning. It was full on. You did everything.
26:35We have Tiffany Starr, which I was given for going the extra mile.
26:45Ed Grimes joined Pratt in 1996 and was responsible for some of Pratt's most profitable stores.
26:52Probably the first, you know, nine years of my time there, it was really the most fun time I'd had ever working, probably.
26:59And ever still, almost.
27:04You were given the keys to the shop and run it. Of course, you had standards to achieve. And you had metrics to hit. And if you hit them, you were rewarded handsomely for doing so.
27:14But you could literally do it in your own way. It was so fast. You'd be making a huge production of sandwiches in the morning.
27:20Then you'd be making more. Then you'd be making more. And it was, you know, running backwards and forwards. It was real pressure.
27:25It's almost like stock trading, but with sandwiches, trying to keep up with demand.
27:33Pratt's quality and love of ingredients like avocado fuelled huge growth. By 1998, there were more than 50 branches and they were selling to 20 million customers a year.
27:47The growth period of that late 90s was, let's go for it. There were opening stores listening every week. And everybody was pumped.
27:54Everybody was pumped because they realised we could go anywhere with this.
27:57And with deep pockets, they could outbid the competition for prime retail space.
28:02They were interested in market share, as big companies are. It's the biggest bully in the playground attitude.
28:11Frank Boltman had opened a new business and had expansion plans of his own. But in a world where Pret was dominant on the high streets, renting new shops wasn't easy.
28:21I'd go along for it, put a bid in, say, yeah, I'll take that rent. And somebody would come back and say, nah, sorry, it's gone. They offered £15,000 more.
28:33Of course, the agents just went in the end with who would pay the highest, highest money.
28:40Burroughs wanted Pret to go in there. You look at Islington, Highbury and Islington. They wanted a Pret to go in there because automatically it kind of says something.
28:48It boosts the crudeness of the areas. Anybody who sells food at lunchtime is a competitor.
28:56You know, if you can't compete, then do something else.
29:01With their winning line-up of quality, convenient sandwiches and rapid expansion, Pret was dominating the high street and making serious profits.
29:11Soon, rival brands began to appear in an effort to muscle in on this growing market.
29:18Sandwich bars like Upmarket Benugo and Bargain Value Benjis were jostling to take the fight to the market leader.
29:25But one company in particular had a pretty obvious strategy.
29:31So when I first came across Eat, they just looked like Pret.
29:35And I remember thinking, it's like trying to copy Walt Disney World. Why would you do it? You can't.
29:40Eat was established in 1996.
29:43The company's strategy? To build their own chain inspired by the best of Pret's and with similar pricing.
29:50But we kind of knew that actually, yeah, you can copy recipes, the look of things,
29:53but you don't have the heart of what we do. You don't have our people.
29:58But Eat had an answer to that. They would poach Pret's top staff.
30:03I got a phone call from Eat.
30:06And they said, look, we're going to copy Pret.
30:10And wherever Pret go, we'll go. And whatever Pret do, we'll do.
30:13And why don't you come and work for us? And, you know, we'll pay you lots of money.
30:20And I said, I can't do that. That's not right.
30:25They might have missed out on Nelly, but others in the Pret empire were willing to cross over.
30:30I felt when I'd left, I'd like gone to the dark side for sure.
30:33I was ambitious in wanting to get to the next level.
30:36I was approached by somebody I worked with at Pret who'd moved on to Eat himself.
30:40And he asked me to join us, join them.
30:44Ed's move paid off. At just 35, he became director of retail for Eat.
30:50Eat didn't copy the whole range of Pret.
30:52The key difference at Eat was that we would look at what other people were doing.
30:56And we spent a lot of time comparing what people were doing.
30:58Pret's Super Club, for example, was a great selling sandwich.
31:01And at Eat we did a chicken and bacon.
31:04We both did tuna and cucumber sandwich and baguette.
31:08Pret did a ham and greve baguette.
31:10And at Eat we did a ham in Jarlsburg.
31:13But despite charging similar prices, there was one key area where Eat hadn't followed Pret's lead.
31:19In the early days of Eat, the sandwiches were not made on site.
31:21They were made somewhere in Wembley.
31:23I would agree that the Pret sandwich was a better-made product.
31:25It's been hand-made downstairs or in the kitchen.
31:28You could only make 50 at a time for freshness.
31:31He did all this stuff with six key points of production, we called them.
31:34That's not going to be the same as making all the sandwiches in one location for 100 shops.
31:39But they're comparable products, I would say.
31:42The Eat sandwiches were good. They were tasty.
31:44However they were making their sarnies, Eat's strategy began to pay off.
31:48Their profits doubled in five years and by 2012 they were taking a sizeable chunk of the lunchtime trade.
31:55We were clearly a threat to Pret.
31:57I don't think you could really set us apart from Pret.
31:59I think we were comparable for sure.
32:01But however close that comparison might have been, Pret stayed well ahead on profits.
32:11In my heart, I never thought, you're not really a contender.
32:14Many other people failed.
32:15I suppose Eat did actually last the longest.
32:17In revolutionising what a sandwich shop could be, Pret had become a London icon.
32:25And in the noughties, Eat started to struggle.
32:28In 2019, Pret saw an opportunity to expand its empire.
32:33When I heard that Pret were buying Eat, a bit of a shame probably is the best way to describe it.
32:39But I know that there is a drive to turn some of the Eat sites into veggie Pret, which was a good story for Pret to promote.
32:49Pret was dominant in London, but in the rest of the UK, other companies had been busy expanding,
32:55with campaigns concentrating on delivering value for money.
33:05At Greggs, we're happiest when we take our own freshly baked bread and prepare delicious sandwiches by hand in every shop.
33:14Greggs might have started life as a family bakery in Newcastle, but it was growing into a massive nationwide chain.
33:22Underpinned by their own freshly made and competitively priced sarnies.
33:29Competition actually has got a plus, because you've got to improve, otherwise you go under.
33:41By the early noughties, the sandwich game had changed.
33:44This quintessentially British snack was now a major commodity,
33:48and staying ahead of the competition meant being there for your customers, wherever they were.
33:53Reach is important.
33:55You know, you've got to have a very appealing offer for somebody to walk past a good shop
34:01to somewhere 300 yards further away.
34:04Greggs' sandwiches and sausage rolls have helped make it one of Britain's most popular brands,
34:09inspiring superfan levels of loyalty and making it a cultural icon.
34:16Greggs' was giving Pret a run for its money, coming in around 20% cheaper.
34:22Everybody is your competitor.
34:24Greggs' coming into London, what locations are they pinching that we could have had?
34:28Come to Greggs and you're going to get great taste and great value.
34:32If you want to pay twice the price for something not as good, that's up to you.
34:35We were always very aware that there were other places like Greggs who had a cheaper price point than Pret.
34:41And that was fine, because actually you might have Greggs four days a week,
34:46but on the fifth day you might treat yourself to a Pret.
34:49And that was absolutely fine by us.
34:51Sometimes their image is a bit carefully nurtured.
34:55Up-market possibly?
34:57Well, that's the way they try to position themselves, yes.
34:59Yes.
35:00Which, fine, that's how they get their higher prices.
35:04With its focus on great value,
35:06Sir Michael believed that Greggs had the potential to compete with anyone.
35:11We believed in having a narrow focus range of really good products.
35:14That was what we were trying to do in Greggs,
35:17rather than be all things to all people.
35:21I think one of the best products we produced was an oval bite,
35:25a char-grilled chicken oval bite.
35:27That was a magic product.
35:28Once the dough had developed,
35:30you then had to just damp it a little bit and press it into the seeds,
35:34just very gently, you know,
35:36just so the seeds would get embedded in it a bit.
35:38And then you'd put a little bit of egg white on it.
35:41So when you baked it, you got a lovely crunchy top to it.
35:45I think we absolutely believe we're ready to go and take on anyone.
35:55It was a matter of really getting more than our fair share of the market.
35:58And we're doing better than Pret now in terms of performance.
36:01They've got their unique spots that we can't beat them,
36:04but overall we can beat them in most places.
36:07By 2019, Greggs had over 2,000 shops throughout the UK,
36:12making them a dominant sandwich force on our high streets.
36:16But one company that had begun life in America in the 60s
36:24was also vying for the top spot alongside Greggs and Pret.
36:29Subway had built a fast food empire on the back of sandwiches.
36:34Open in the UK since the 90s,
36:37Subway saw massive growth over the next 20 years
36:40and serves almost 100 million submarine sarnies here each year.
36:44We are the healthier fast food option.
36:47You don't do the walk of shame like you do when you've had fried food.
36:50In America, Subway didn't pull its punches,
36:53promoting its claims to be healthy.
36:57Try Subway. Fresh baked bread, fresh meats, fresh veggies
37:02and plenty of six-inch subs with just six grams of fat or less.
37:06Subway. Big on taste, not on fat.
37:09I think it's grown the sandwich from being something that was potentially cheese and onion back in its day.
37:19So it's really expanded the basis of what the sandwich could be from quite a bland option.
37:26Those competitors like Greggs, like Pret are all in our competitor space, absolutely.
37:35But the real secret of Subway's success has been to supercharge one thing, choice.
37:42And incredibly, they're doing it by making sandwiches in front of customers,
37:47just like the posh independent shops, but at lightning speed.
37:5330-year-old Adrian Johnson is one of Subway's youngest franchise owners.
37:58You can get pretty much any sandwich you want made the way you want it,
38:02right in front of your eyes.
38:04There's nowhere really like it on the high street.
38:07A mathematician once told us that there's actually 37 million different combinations
38:12that you can have in Subway from the freshly baked bread to the vegetables to the proteins.
38:19Everything that goes in the background, that's not quick.
38:22There's definitely nothing fast about baking bread.
38:26We're slicing the veggies first thing in the morning.
38:29You know, you're talking hours of work and then the final experience is the fast part.
38:43I don't think I've ever had a Subway.
38:47It's a foot long. Good to see a foot long.
38:51It's big, isn't it?
38:52You can see the ingredients there.
38:54Ham, some kind of flaky cheese.
38:57So it's a veggie patty.
39:03Bread's good.
39:05I wouldn't normally order this, but actually it's very good.
39:11Erm, yes.
39:14Do you not want to take a bite?
39:16Erm, do you know I'm going to pass on that? Is that OK?
39:21I think people from Pret would shun me.
39:22It's just different. No, all right, I'm good. I'll go back to the Greggs or I'd have that.
39:28If you asked me whether I wanted to eat a Subway sandwich or starve, I would probably starve.
39:40But that's me personally. They're too big and it's a very cost-driven product.
39:48It's a very clever product because it's doing volume and it's doing commercially viable volume.
39:54But that's food that you're eating as fuel.
39:57It's something that you eat when you need to get the calories.
40:03I don't think a lot of people understand that Subway bake their bread every day and their cookies every day.
40:10And actually the quality is fabulous.
40:12So for those who think that Subway is not for them, I would definitely say give it another go.
40:15Subway now has 2,200 stores in the UK, but Greggs is snapping at their heels.
40:27When I retired it was about 1,400 shops and it's I think just over 2,000 now.
40:32You've got to fish where the fish are. You've got to go and follow the customers.
40:37Greggs are popping up all over the place, but actually it's just another choice for lunch.
40:42It brings more people to that area and becomes more of a lunch destination.
40:47Is that a strategy for Greggs and Subway to sort of open where the competition is?
40:52I think we're already open. Greggs will be opening where we are because we were there before them.
40:59I'm sure Greggs opening strategy is to open where there's a Subway and I would probably do the same if I was Greggs.
41:05I think Greggs is winning it.
41:07Whether they are somewhere doing better, I would doubt, but they could be. They could be.
41:16The huge growth of the sandwich business seemed unstoppable, but nothing could have prepared it for what struck in 2019.
41:23In all my years of steering this organisation, there's never been a more challenging time than the one we now face.
41:32But I also know that we will come through this as we are a creative and resilient industry, which will reinvent itself to meet the challenges of the new normal.
41:44Our industry got absolutely hammered over the pandemic period around about 70% of the market just disappeared overnight.
41:54In the last year, we've seen a 38% increase in volume of sales, which suggests the industry is climbing back quite rapidly at the moment.
42:03My optimism is that we will be back to our original levels or as near as we can get to it towards the end of this year.
42:14Today, the sandwich market's big name brands can be found almost everywhere.
42:19We are so many light years ahead of where we were. This industry has really transformed eating on the go to an art that is way beyond where we were back in the 80s.
42:35Even Pret-à-Manger now have branches at motorway service stations, just like Greggs and Marks & Spencer.
42:41Sandwiches now have become, in very many ways, quite commoditised. It's become much more difficult to find innovation. It doesn't mean to say that there isn't innovation out there.
43:02OK, so a mac and cheese ball, two spring rolls and a sponge. Dreamy. Thank you very much.
43:07Max Halley thought he could see new opportunities between two slices of bread and created a sandwich shop that would only ever open for dinner.
43:19Everyone said, well, how are you going to persuade people that the sandwich can be something you can eat at night that could be your dinner?
43:27And I said, well, I'll just only open at night and then if anybody wants one, they'll have to have it for their dinner.
43:33As far as I know, this does seem to be a relatively new way of looking at the sandwich.
43:41Max's best-selling sandwich is his ham, egg and chips at £12 a pop.
43:48The first thing to do is apply a liberal layer of mayonnaise.
43:53This is mayo and malt vinegar, lashings of malt vinegar.
43:57Next, ham.
43:58So, I have a pan of ham hock meat here that has been reheated after cooking in its stock.
44:08So, boom, boom, boom.
44:11I have a sandwich mantra. Hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.
44:16And that it is within those three contrasts we find what our brains are looking for to perceive something as delicious.
44:27Crisps.
44:28Lid on.
44:30Bit of a squish.
44:32Oh, I got it.
44:36There.
44:37And then perhaps I turn that finger.
44:40Pfft.
44:43I'm not going to lie.
44:44At first, it could have gone a lot better.
44:50I think the first night we opened, I did one customer.
44:55And because it was the first week we were open, we did 50% off the food.
44:59And the guy said that he thought the sandwich was worth £3.50.
45:08Now we are doing about 1,000 covers a week.
45:12Sandwiches have been transformed from a disappointing 70s turn-off to a luxury high-quality bite
45:18and are now the ultimate highly profitable fast food.
45:22A snack that can give you any flavour you want at any quality you desire.
45:27Fast.
45:28As far as I can determine, the evolution of sandwiches continues.
45:33People are looking for and wanting to buy better and better and nicer and nicer, interesting breads, interesting flavours.
45:42I mean, just fabulous.
45:45In a way, we've been foisted by our own success because we've actually created a product that the expectations of consumers
45:54are so much greater than it was back in the days of British Royal sandwiches.
45:58I can't tell you what the future will be.
46:00We'll be watching the market and moving in a direction that the customer wants us to go in
46:06and maybe occasionally giving a little bit of a nudge if something looks exciting.
46:10I think that there's a very big variety now.
46:15There is a lot of choice out there.
46:17You know, it will always remain an exciting product that people love.
46:22We'll be looking for a new person.
46:24We'll be looking for a new business.
46:257th century version of a UK
46:26In a Sunday, the billion dollar world
46:27We'll be talking about your business gulfs,
46:28we'll be looking for a new business gulfs,
46:29and we'll be reaching the same time,
46:31we'll be working for a new business gulfs.
46:32We'll be looking for a new business that people love.
46:33Transcription by CastingWords
Be the first to comment