Two Business-District Lunch Brands Want To Win You Back

The CulinaryWoman Newsletter looks at Pret A Manger and Sweetgreen

Happy Halloween Weekend! For the past couple of days, I have seen people walking around Ann Arbor in face paint and costumes. In New Orleans, that would simply be normal (come to think of it, that’s normal for a University of Michigan football game, too). One enterprising group of employees at the Songbird Cafe all dressed up as Mario from the video game, with mustaches and bow ties.

However you are celebrating — costume or not — I hope you’ll enjoy spooky season. I am especially happy to greet our newest subscribers and to thank our paid subscribers. You keep this newsletter going, and your subscription gets you treats like Red Beans & Advice on Mondays, the CulinaryWoman Reading Room on Wednesdays, and you are eligible for giveaways like cookbooks and chocolate.

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Pret And Sweetgreen Aim For A Bigger Future

In the before times, big city office workers who were able to go out for lunch often headed for a couple of chains: Pret A Manger and Sweetgreens. Their healthy(ish) salads, sushi, sandwiches and beverages kept commuters fortified in places like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles to face an afternoon of meetings and the trip home.

Pret’s name means “ready to eat,” a riff on the fashion term “pret a porter” or “ready to wear.” I have always been a fan. I ate in my first Pret on the mezzanine of the Green Park tube station in London, where the first Pret opened in 1986. I often hit up the Pret near Leicester Square after trips to the theater (it sometimes discounted its last dishes).

In New York, there was a Pret around the corner from the apartments that the New York Times made available to its correspondents, and it was always busy. Another was a just a short walk from the newsroom, so if you needed a break, you could always head down the street.

I discovered Sweetgreen in Chicago on the day after a major blizzard that stranded hundreds of motorists on Lake Shore Drive overnight. I was going stir crazy and decided I would mush out to get something to eat. To my surprise, our street was clear (I’ve always thought that having Oprah for a neighbor might have been the reason) and I was able to get a salad in Water Tower Place.

When Covid sent office workers home, however, both those brands suffered. In 2020, Pret closed 74 outlets in the U.K. and 21 in the U.S., scrapped its dividend and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the business to keep it afloat.

Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman caused an uproar in a 2021 LinkedIn post in which he declared, “No vaccine nor mask will save us.” In the now-vanished post, he railed that Americans were too fat to survive Covid and that the government should be telling people what to eat to save their health. He subsequently apologized, but the company’s revenue took a significant hit.

Both are now trying to turn the page on the past several years, with similar but slightly different strategies.

Beyond business districts

In July, Pret reported its strongest first-half results since 2018. According to The Guardian, Pret has adapted to the rise of working from home with more outlets beyond business districts. In England, 55 percent of new Prets have opened outside of London, and it now opens 70 percent of its shops on the weekends. As a result, its weekend revenues are up 27`1 percent in the past two years.

There are only 61 Prets left in the United States — 40 of them in NYC — but Pret boldly plans to open 300 by the end of the decade. It told Reuters that it is going to target suburban transit hubs, as well as walk-in stores in a range of cities.

Pret is implementing one of the tools it used back home to expand sales. It has introduced Club Pret, a subscription service that allows participants to order up to five barista-made drinks per day, including coffee, tea and lemonade, and get 20 percent off everything else.

Club Pret costs $40 a month, but it’s kind of like having a Costco card: if you go there a lot anyway, the discounts probably cover the expense. CEO Pano Christou told Reuters the brand hopes to expand beyond white-collar office workers and and possibly develop drive-thru stores.

Sweetgreen’s robotic driven kitchen

Meanwhile, Neman is still in charge of Sweetgreen, and he is pushing that brand in new directions. That includes opening new stores, like the two that arrived in Ann Arbor during the past year, and also new production techniques inside those stores.

Earlier this year, it rolled out a system it calls the Infinite Kitchen in Naperville, Illinois, outside Chicago. The robot-driven machinery dispenses ingredients into a bowl that travels along a conveyor belt. According to QSR Magazine, the Infinite Kitchen can produce between 400 to 500 bowls, plates, and side dishes per hour, 50 percent more than a typical restaurant’s human production line.

As you might expect, that automated method involves less employees. The Naperville store has one-third fewer people than a typical store, and Neman predicts that all its stores will be similarly automated within five years. Another change: the brand is adding more dinner-sized entrees, including miso-glazed salmon, hot honey chicken and Southwest chicken fajita, hoping that lunch customers might pick one up to eat later.

Keep an eye out for both Pret and Sweetgreens beyond the cities where you are used to seeing them, and while you’re exploring their stores and their apps, watch for more innovations, too.

David Chang Says Farewell To Two NYC Restaurants

There was probably no chef more talked about during the 2000s than David Chang. He seemed to be everywhere, opening restaurants, appearing on television, and launching a magazine called Lucky Peach.

While ssam — lettuce wraps — were a traditional part of Korean cuisine, Chang made them familiar to New York hipsters with his Momofuku Ssam Bar. People lined up for hours to get a counter seat inside his crowded restaurant.

I went just after it opened at the invitation of a friend who worked for the Magnum photo agency, and had my first bao bun there. I also ate at the Toronto version, and while it was fine, I thought that the experience didn’t match the buzz that I encountered at the original location. (The Toronto one closed last year.)

Back in New York, Chang subsequently opened Momofuku Ko, a fine-dining restaurant on First Avenue that included a variety of innovations, including an online reservations system and imaginative looking dishes like a pouched egg that oozed caviar. It subsequently moved and continued to receive accolades.

Momofuku Ssam closed last month, and last week, Chang told the staff at Ko that the restaurant would close next Saturday. According to New York Magazine, Chang told employees that “the culinary world is much different than it was 20 years ago.” That’s true — many other restaurateurs and food personalities have joined him on the national stage.

There are still other Chang restaurants in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and you can order Momofuku noodles and chili crunch online (maybe you’ve seen Chang in his Instagram ads).

What Happens When Taylor Swift Eats At Your Restaurant

Swifties are abuzz about Taylor Swift’s new version of her 1989 album and her romance with Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs. But in New York, restaurants are sharing stories about what happens when Taylor takes her friends out to eat.

In a hilarious article, New York Magazine writer Rachel Handler spent a week dining at the places that Taylor frequented during her latest down time in the Big Apple. The restaurants included Via Carota, Emilio’s Ballato, Hôtel Barrière Fouquet’s New York, Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria, Zero Bond, Casino, and Temple Bar. Taylor subsequently went to Nobu and the Waverly Inn.

There is a long section in which a bartender describes waiting on America’s favorite singer, and an unforgettable and unprintable quote from a restaurant owner.

Meanwhile, if you remember my essay about daylight dining, Taylor is right on trend. During a visit to visit her new boyfriend in Kansas City, his home received a food delivery from First Watch. According to the Daily Mail, which got a copy of the receipt, it contained two turkey omelets and two green juices. So, her choices apparently aren’t all upscale.

A Best-Selling Book And An Upcoming Cookbook

In the media world, viewers who have Apple TV can see one of the year’s most popular books on the small screen. Lessons in Chemistry is now a streaming series, starring Brie Larson.

She’s a 1950s scientist (rare in itself) who winds up hosting a cooking show on Boston television. I enjoyed the book and hope to catch up with the series soon.

Meanwhile, my friend Dan Pashman shared some great news last week. He’s going to publish a cookbook next March called Anything’s Pastable: 81 Inventive Recipes For Saucy People. Dan is the host of The Sporkful podcast and a pasta entrepreneur, developing three different types of noodles with Sfoglini.

You can order a package that includes Sporkful pasta plus a signed copy of his book. (You’ll get the cookbook once it’s published.)

Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman

On Dec. 12, I’ll be teaching a virtual course on electric cars at New York’s 92nd Street. I’ll look at the past, present and future of EVs in what I hope will be an information packed hour. The program will be held over Zoom and starts at 7 pm ET.

Please sign up and tell anyone who is interested in our automotive future. If it’s your first 92nd Street Y Roundtable class, you can receive a discount for enrolling.

You also are welcome to sign up for my other Substack, Intersection: Everything That Moves. It’s a serialized update of my book The End of Detroit, and I am posting breaking news items on the United Auto Workers strike.

You can find me in these places.

Website: www.michelinemaynard.com

Email: culinarywoman (@) gmail.com

LinkedIn: Micheline Maynard

Threads and Instagram: (@)michelinemaynard

Have a safe and tasty Halloween. I’ll see our paid subscribers tomorrow and everyone else next Sunday.