Benchmarks: Pret A Manger & DO & CO
Pret A Manger shows how a daily-fresh, curated meal brand scales on the shelf. DO & CO shows how a central-kitchen, premium catering business scales on contracts — and it was built by a founder with Turkish roots. Our model takes the shelf from one and the kitchen from the other.
1. Pret A Manger
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Origin and owner | First Pret shop opened in London in 1986; acquired by JAB Holding from Bridgepoint (2018) | Wikipedia secondary / unverified |
| 2024 system sales | £1.2bn (+10%); pre-IFRS16 adjusted EBITDA £98m; 717 shops | Pret press release, Sep 2025 verified source |
| 2025 system sales | £1.2bn (+2.7% constant currency); operating profit £37m | Global Coffee Report, Jun 2026 secondary / unverified |
| Estate (mid-2026) | Over 750 shops in 21 countries | Global Coffee Report secondary / unverified |
| U.S. | About 70 sites in 2025; Oct 2023 JV with franchisee Dallas International to triple the U.S. business in five years; CEO cited a 300-store U.S. target by 2029 | The Grocer · Retail Insight Network · Hospitality Ireland / Reuters secondary / unverified |
Lessons for us
- Fresh daily, narrow menu, fast service is a scalable promise — the operating discipline the Wellness Kitchen must match.
- The U.S. is hard even for Pret: it had to reopen Chicago and is shifting from office districts to transport hubs, suburbs and drive-thrus. Our micro-location strategy (hospitals, campuses, hotels, store-in-store) avoids office-traffic dependence.
- Partnership for speed: Pret uses a JV/franchise partner to expand in the U.S. — consistent with our "we enable, we don't execute" model.
- Footprint cost: the SFS analysis uses Pret's four-cabinet format (hot, cold, salad, snacks) as the baseline the Wellness Kitchen compresses (Mediterranean Wellness Kitchen paper).
2. DO & CO
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Founded 1981 in Vienna by Attila Doğudan; listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange; premium brands include Demel, Hédiard and HENRY | Parqet company profile secondary / unverified |
| FY 2025/26 (Apr 2025 – Mar 2026) | Revenue €2,461.6m (+7.1%); EBITDA €300.6m; EBITDA margin 12.2% | DO & CO corporate news, 11 Jun 2026 verified source |
| Mix | Airline catering about 79% of revenue; event catering and restaurants/lounges/hotels the rest | DO & CO FY results verified source |
| Balance sheet | Net debt / EBITDA 0.18 at 31 Dec 2025 | DO & CO Q3 news verified source |
| Türkiye | Turkish DO & CO joint venture with Turkish Airlines (2007) | Panayır v3, Appendix G (open sources) secondary / unverified |
| U.S. | Reported: six U.S. sites with about $500m revenue; plan to double U.S. headcount to 10,000 within 3–5 years | Parqet news summary secondary / unverified |
Lessons for us
- Central kitchen + contracts = stable margins. DO & CO earns double-digit EBITDA margins on B2B contracts served from central kitchens. Our Azusa kitchen serves contract-like channels too: Meze Bars, wellness kiosks, lounges.
- Premium is a strategy, not a price point: heritage brands and chef standards ("Flying Chefs") carry the premium — the role Mediterranean Chef plays in our model.
- Turkish roots, global premium: a founder with Turkish roots built a listed global premium caterer — a reference for investors who ask whether this cuisine can scale to a premium standard.
3. Synthesis
| Borrow from Pret | Borrow from DO & CO | Our difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product | Daily-fresh, curated, fast | Chef standard, premium heritage | Mediterranean wellness; personalized trays |
| Production | Shop kitchens | Central production kitchens | One USDA central kitchen + Ohanyan's lab |
| Channels | Own shops, franchise/JV | B2B contracts (airlines, events, lounges) | Store-in-store, micro-locations, retail, DTC |
| Risk we avoid | Office-traffic dependence, high rent | Concentration on a few large customers | Diversified host locations, light footprint |