Overall ranking: 71
Restaurateurs ranking: 20
Julian Metcalfe - Snapshot
Julian Metcalfe is the co-founder and creative director of Pret A Manger, the groundbreaking sandwich chain that ushered in a new era a freshly-made quality food to take-away.
According to Allegra Strategies’ annual report into the £1.1b branded coffee bar market, Prêt is the third largest player in the food-focused sector and its store numbers are only exceeded by the top three companies in the coffee-focused sector as well.
The group, which expects to turn over £192m in 2006, has 143 outlets in the UK, along with 10 branches in the USA and nine in Hong Kong. It employs around 2,500 staff.
Metcalfe also co-founded Itsu, the London chain of conveyor-belt sushi restaurants and takeaway shops, with Prêt director Clive Schlee.
Julian Metcalfe - Career guide
Metcalfe, who is in his early forties, opened the first Prêt in London’s Victoria in 1986 with co-founder and friend Sinclair Beecham, whom he met while the two were studying property law in London.
He opened his first Itsu in August 1997 and, in 2000, stepped back from the day-to-day operation of Pret to focus on the new brand,
Fast food McDonald’s £50m acquisition of a 33% stake in Pret in January funded a rapid expansion overseas. Metcalfe returned to Pret as creative director in 2003 following two years of losses.
Julian Metcalfe - What we think
Pret’s focus on nutritious food-to-go revolutionised the sandwich bar market when it opened its first branch in 1986, which was serving more than 7,000 customers a week within its first year.
Pret focuses on high-quality ingredients and rejects obscure chemicals and genetically-modified substances. Food is freshly-made each day and packaged in recycled cardboard rather than plastic to highlight its freshness. Any unsold produce is donated to the homeless at the end of each day.
The group has inspired a new generation of players, such as Leon, that aim to provide healthy but cheap fast food as an antidote to the over-industrialised and processed fare that dominates the sector.
Pret’s success has won both Metcalfe and Beecham MBEs and the chain regularly gets the consumers’ vote for food quality and cleanliness in Allegra’s annual reports on the coffee bar market.
Within a decade, Pret had grown to 45 stores but its most rapid growth has been in the current century. It opened its first overseas store in New York in 2000 and its international expansion accelerated after McDonald’s bought a 33% stake in early 2001. In 2002 it moved into Hong Kong and, in a joint venture with McDonald’s Company Japan, into Tokyo.
The Hong Kong stores became profitable in 2005 and the New York branches were forecast to break even in 2006. Japan, however, proved a harder nut to crack and the group exited the market in March 2004 after setting up 14 branches over an 18-month period.
Some shareholders objected to this rapid growth and its contribution to pre-tax losses of £6.7m in 2001 and £20m in 2002. This disagreement led to the departure of chairman Andrew Rolfe and deputy chief executive Harvey Smyth and the return of Metcalfe as creative director in March 2003.
By November, Metcalfe had introduced 70 new items to the menu and announced plans to close a number of loss-making stores. but to open another 200 over the next four years.
The introduction of new items such as fresh sushi, salads, soups and more hot foods along with the roll-out of a softer decor appears to have paid off. In July 2005, Pret reported a £7.8m operating profit – its first substantial profit in four years in 2006.
Pret intends to open 30 branches a year over the next three years, of which around 20 will be in the UK.
Itsu, in the meantime, had grown to three London restaurants by mid-2006, with four more due to open before the year-end and plans to add between five and seven new sites each year. Since 2005, the restaurants have been joined by a chain of seven Itsu shops selling freshly-made sushi boxes, hot noodles and soups for takeaway which can also seat up to 120 customers in the larger branches.
In October 2006, Itsu made its US debut in a one-off deal with Australian star franchisee Luke Fryer.
Julian Metcalfe – Further information
Pret A Manger profile on CatererSearch
Pret a Manger official website
Read more about the CatererSearch 100, the list of the most influential people here