PRET A MANGER

Like bread, coffee goes stale

Our "Just Roasted" coffee demonstrates Pret’s true commitment to quality and freshness.

After a couple of weeks, the flavour deteriorates. Big coffee companies keep quiet about this. Roasting and shipping coffee beans once every six months might make great business sense but it also makes crappy coffee. It’s like all milk being long-life rather than fresh just because it suited the dairies.

Our coffee supplier now roasts Pret coffee every day, Monday to Friday, and rushes it to us straight away. If the beans aren’t used within two weeks, we stop using them. No one else on the high street does this. In fact, most of our competitors use their coffee beans for anywhere up to 6 months!

Does freshness really make such a difference? Yes! The air reacts with coffee beans and they become lifeless and stale, and the resulting espresso loses all of its lively flavours. This is obviously more noticeable for open coffee, but even the one-way valve on some coffee bags only preserves flavour for a little while.

Why 14 days? Coffee loses its aroma and flavour intensity long before it’s truly stale. Our coffee supplier researched regular coffee drinkers and found that they could notice a real difference in coffee after 14 days. That’s why all our coffees are made from beans that are two weeks from roasting.

So I suppose your prices gone up? Generally speaking, yes. Improving our coffee has meant that it costs more but we think it’s worth the improved taste. We do continually review our pricing to ensure that our customers enjoy value for money and that we remain competitive. You’ll find that we’re still cheaper than many of our competitors, for coffee that is much fresher and, we think, tastes much better.

How much coffee do your put in your espressos? 14g. This is a 14.4% increase per cup and much more than our main competitors use. So our classic espresso is actually a double espresso. And as our espresso is the base for our cappuccinos, lattes and mochas, they’re stronger too.

Where are your beans from? Colombia and Brazil. We’ve changed the origins of our coffee to create a bigger and bolder espresso with a fuller flavour. The coffee has also been roasted slightly darker to create richer chocolate and tobacco flavours.

How would you describe the overall taste? In coffee speak? “Pret's blend is about depth of body and texture. It possesses a dark, hazelnut coloured crema, with a nose of intense roasted sweet notes followed by a hint of fruit in dark wood smoke. The aftertaste is intense with more tobacco notes."

Do you use Fairtrade coffee? All our coffees are now UTZ certified, Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and organic.

What is UTZ? This means that when it comes to growing our coffee we follow strict organic growing and sustainability standards that protect local ecosystems and wildlife. We don’t use any chemicals that could be dangerous to the environment while growing, harvesting or manufacturing our coffee. This also means that we pay a higher price to the coffee producers for all our coffee beans, ensuring that this covers their production and living costs. The premium we pay goes towards areas such as schools, healthcare, roads and improved housing.

For more information, go to www.utzcertified.org (UTZ Official Website), www.ico.org (International Coffee Organisation), www.fairtrade.org.uk (Fairtrade Foundation), www.rainforest-alliance.org (Rainforest Alliance) and www.soilassociation.org (Soil Association).