Pret will trial meal deals in October, November and DecemberCredit: Alamy
Pret plans to trial the meal deal format in the final three months of the year.
Boss Pano Christou said the chain’s focus is on “offering great value for money” as part of its medium-term strategy to grow and return to sustainable profits.
Details on pricing and locations for the trial have yet to be revealed.
Pret’s latest accounts showed a pre-tax loss of £525.2 million for the year to January 2 – largely due to a £552.9 million write-down after a reassessment by owner JAB, which bought the chain in 2018.
This followed a £61.7 million loss the year before.
Despite the losses, Pret said its earnings before adjustments rose 36 per cent to £98 million for the year.
Meanwhile, total revenue dipped 4.2 per cent to £868.4 million compared to the previous year.
Like-for-like sales grew by 2.8 per cent, helped by an 11 per cent expansion to 717 shops as the business continued to grow internationally.
Pret said it is keen to expand further in the US, especially around city centres and travel hubs.
I went to the UK’s best sandwich shop that’s gone viral on TikTok due to amazing family history and huge portions
Christou, Pret’s CEO, said: “2024 was another year of growth for Pret, where we took disciplined decisions to protect sales, despite intense strains on the hospitality industry.
“Going forward our priority will be to drive transactions and sustainable growth by offering great value for money for Pret customers.
“Our focus will be on growing Pret’s market share in the UK and internationally, prioritising city centres and travel hubs, backed by the experience and expertise of additional world-class board members and a strengthened management team.”
Pret opened its first shop in London in 1986 and now employs 12,500 staff across over 700 locations in 21 countries.
WASHINGTON — A man charged with a felony for hurling a sandwich at a federal law-enforcement official in the nation’s capital has been fired from his job at the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a social media post Thursday.
A video of Sean Charles Dunn berating a group of federal agents late Sunday went viral online. Dunn was arrested on an assault charge after he threw a “sub-style” sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent, a court filing said.
Dunn, 37, of Washington, was an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division, according to a department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
“This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ,” Bondi wrote. “You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.”
A multiagency flood of uniformed federal law enforcement officers had fanned out across the city over the weekend after the White House had announced stepped-up measures to combat crime. That was before President Trump’s announcement Monday that he was taking over Washington’s police department and activating 800 members of the National Guard.
The Justice Department still employs a former FBI agent who was charged with joining a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and cheering on rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege, repeatedly yelling, “Kill ‘em!” as they attacked police. The former FBI supervisory agent, Jared Lane Wise, is serving as a counselor to Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin Jr., who was a leading figure in Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election.
Around 11 p.m. on Sunday, Dunn approached a group of CBP agents, pointed a finger in an agent’s face and swore at him, calling him a “fascist,” a police affidavit says. An observer’s video captured Dunn throwing a sandwich at the agent’s chest, the affidavit says.
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.
Dunn tried to run away but was apprehended, police said.
An attorney for Dunn didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Dunn’s charge.
The incident coincided with Trump’s push to flood the city with National Guard troops and federal officers. Trump claims crime in the city has reached emergency levels, but city leaders point to statistics showing violent crime at a 30-year low.
Kunzelman and Richer write for the Associated Press.
Author Steph Cha in the kitchen at Louisa’s Trattoria in Larchmont Village.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Marlowe Lee was off the clock, 12 more hours in the can, but Call-Me-Jessie had changed the closing procedure, and now, for the second week running, Marlowe had to do final cleanup and lockup after clocking out. It was 9, and she was starving, with another 15 minutes of unpaid work ahead of her. She hadn’t eaten since her lunch break, and as sick as she was of Charcuterie Girl’s sandwiches (The Best Deli on Ventura Boulevard, Human-Owned and Operated!), it was torture making and serving them on an empty stomach.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
She set two slices of baguette on the counter and stared at her options. Roast turkey and mortadella, vegan salami and imitation tuna salad. It was depressing, that fake tuna, the best on the market but still a vaguely unsavory amalgam of fish paste and seaweed powder — nothing like the tuna she remembered. It made her think of all the things she missed, those lost treasures of the recent past. Avocados, panda bears, temperate weather.
Her eyes landed on Charcuterie Girl’s crown jewel: a whole leg of ibérico ham in its own bespoke rig. How much longer would the world have black Spanish pigs, fed nothing but acorns and chestnuts? The jamón cost $70 an ounce, but rich people were too rich — they bought things because they were expensive, and those pigs were in higher and higher demand. Jessie named the sandwich the Trillionaire’s Ham and Cheese at the suggestion of the richest man in Los Angeles, who personally requested to see jamón ibérico on the menu. He bragged about it online, and now it was every local billionaire’s favorite sandwich in town.
Marlowe had yet to try the jamón — she wasn’t allowed to touch it, except to slice it by hand for high-value customers, who liked to record her slow, methodical movements as she handled the special ham knife. It came off in thin red ribbons that she piled onto baguettes with manchego and grated tomato. She tried to imagine the taste, and her mouth watered.
She eyed the camera, which transmitted footage to Jessie’s iGlass, with any irregularities flagged for immediate review. An irregularity could get Marlowe fired, never mind that the camera also logged hours and hours of labor violations.
She was lucky, she knew, to have this job — any job at all, when she was only 23. Just that day, a customer had asked how long she’d spent on the California Hourly Employment.
Marlowe answered, truthfully, that she’d gotten on when she was in college. The customer shook his head. He’d been waiting for two years — how could anyone be expected to go that long without work? Marlowe didn’t mention the exemption for small business owners, who could circumvent CHEW if they were willing to invest in superfluous human labor, or that her mom and Jessie had been classmates at Wellesley.
Marlowe looked back at the camera and picked up the ham knife. It slid easily under the oily meat, again and again and again. She worked until she had enough jamón for a half-dozen sandwiches, then pulled a last slice right off the leg and popped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes and laughed. Oh man, she thought. I could get used to this.
Steph Cha is a critic and author of “Your House Will Pay,” winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy.
Allnight Supermarket
By Ivy Pochoda
Ivy Pochoda, right, a novelist, and writer/activist Linda Leigh in Skid Row.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I’m here to tell you a few things. Some are triumphs and some are facts. But first — let me welcome you to the first official meeting of the Skid Row Neighborhood Council. Doesn’t sound historic to you? Well, let me say, we’ve been trying for decades to get recognized. As a neighborhood. As a community. As people. The BID stopped us. The Downtown Neighborhood Council stopped us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a succession of supposedly helpful mayors hadn’t a hand in stopping us.
Let me also say there was a moment when I myself lived in the elements. That’s what I told my daughter. “I’m living in the elements.” Nevertheless, it’s part of my story — this story that brings us here today. Thirty long years after we first tried to get a neighborhood council of our own. What’s the big deal? Let me tell you the big deal. This is a real neighborhood — an actual community. We all know each other and what’s what and what’s up. Did people in Hancock Park know each other? Did folks in Beverly Hills help one another out? Nothing doing. Just strangers in big houses. It’s different down here. Always has been.
It took some doing to get recognized. We are the last ones not driven out by climate and prices. That’s what sent the rich people away. They gave up and made this city a ghost town of heat and poverty. But we stayed. Climate and prices don’t mean a lot when you don’t have a lot of choice. Not much we can do about the elements. Fact is — we are used to the elements. The elements are our thing. And rising prices don’t matter when you can’t afford anything anyway.
So when everyone up and fled, we got our neighborhood council charter. We are Skid Row proud — climate and cash be damned.
Things happen by default, you know. I got sick. I lost my home. I wound up on the streets. I got housed for good. So be it. That was a long time ago. Same with this council. We tried. We tried again. We got denied. The city got hot. The city got wet. The city became the climate crisis’ ground zero. Prices shot up. People didn’t want to pay for water rights. They didn’t want their kids suffering at recess. They didn’t want to pay soaring gas prices for their private jets to take them north. So came the great abandoning.
We could have moved into their houses. We could have swept into the Hollywood Hills and Brentwood. But that’s not a place. That’s not a home. That’s not a community. We are who we are and where we are. And with no one left but us, we got our council. And now we have plans, and plans are happening. You might think our plans are simple. But these small things are everything.
And so I’m proud to set in motion our first community market. All these years, and this is the first time Skid Row has an exclusive place to shop, hear music, get your hair cut. A place to get trained up to work, a place to give back. A place from which we will rebuild this blessedly emptied city in our own image.
Ivy Pochoda is the author of several novels including “Wonder Valley,” “Visitation Street,” “These Women,” “Sing Her Down,” which won the L.A. Times Book Prize in 2023, and “Ecstasy,” which was released in June.
2047: Meet David Allen, the Minister of Commemoration
By Jonathan Lethem
Author and MacArthur Fellow Jonathan Letham against a backdrop of Mt. Baldy in Upland.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Stanleg and I had long planned an expedition to meet the Minister of Commemoration. Very few people knew as much as we did, which made Stanleg and me famous frenemies. Stanleg was the Emperor of Dead People Hill. I lived in Bonelli with the Boaties. He liked org as much as I liked disorg, but we both remembered the floodtimes from when we were children, so the little amnesiacs liked to flock around and pepper us with queries, but our information was nothing like Minister Allen’s.
You could get by gondola up to the mouth of the Euclid trail, where the donkey trolleys dragged the sledges up toward Baldy. That was where the Minister lived. He liked the high places and never went by water. David Allen was made and lived in the Dry and still saw it all with the Eyes of the Dry: the Gabriels and the Wetness below. They had once named some of these places for the water, like Riverside, or the Wash, before the water came. But those who truly remembered the Dry wanted no part of the Wetness.
So Stanleg and I packed in and portaged through the Pomonliest swamp and then crossed the Downland gondoliers’ palms with bribes to get us to the shore where the mule sleds waited, and then we bribed the mule sledders. They had no interest in our tales.
The Minister of Commemoration waited in his temple, only lightly guarded by amnesiacs. He was deep and surprisingly tall, though crooked and bald, and his robes hung long. He greeted us with a magnificent smile. The lenses as well as the repairing tape on his spectacles were thick.
We had brought waterkale cakes and wild bird hand-pies, because we had been encouraged to believe David Allen liked these things. Perhaps he did, though he seemed to take no notice of our gifts.
“Stanleg is from Dead People Hill,” I said before Stanleg could get a word in. “He likes org, and he orgs those dead people pretty good. Maybe the amnesiacs not so good.”
“Fitchly hails from Bonelli Underwater Park,” said Stanleg, returning the favor. “He is an expert in disorg and keeping it real. I had to bake you those hand-pies myself.”
“Org and disorg were sitting on a fence,” said David Allen. “Org fell off, and disorg felt the bump.”
We were humbled by his wisdom, and all the rancor was relieved from our bodies. We wanted only to be suffused with his powers of Commemoration.
“Is it true,” asked Stanleg, “that where there is now a beach there was once a forest and a lawn?”
“It was a forest lawn, yes, on the top of the hill, when the lands surrounding were dry. But it took much watering to keep the Forest Lawn from reverting to yellow scrub. I know this might seem preposterous to you…”
“Watering is one of the old mysteries. Was it the watering that brought the flood?”
“Not in a direct sense,” said Allen.
“Will you give us a Commemory?” I asked.
“I have been thinking much about the Beach Boys,” said Paul Allen. He seemed to draw deep inside of himself to summon the Commemory. Perhaps he mused upon the chosen theme because Stanleg had mentioned his own beach, there at Dead People Hill. “There were many debates,” the Minister intoned, “back in the dry times, about the extent of their Inland reach. Some scant evidence suggests they came to Riverside in 1962. An autographed glossy or two. But did they actually perform?”
“What miracles might the Beach Boys perform?”
“At that time, they might have performed ‘Don’t Worry Baby.’”
“This would have been a consolation.”
“If they made it to Riverside and performed ‘Don’t Worry Baby,’ it would have been a terrific consolation, yes.”
“We thank you for this Commemory,” said Stanleg. “We don’t want to ask too much of you.”
“I am old.”
“Yes.”
“It may or may not have happened. Go now.”
“Yes.”
“And remember, and speak it to your amnesiacs.”
“Yes.”
“Tell them this. Tell them they are all Beach Boys now.”
Jonathan Lethem, a MacArthur fellow, is the author of several novels, including “The Fortress of Solitude,” and “Motherless Brooklyn,” winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and several short story collections. “A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories,” will be published in September.
In the 1990s, chicken Caesar wraps dominated lunchtime menus. Aside from the comforting hit of nostalgia for a simpler time, I don’t remember them fondly. Often soggy, laden with too much dressing and scant, dry chicken, it was the kind of unfortunate premade meal you’d eat alone at an airport cafe.
So you can imagine my surprise to see the Y2K-era sandwich having a sudden renaissance at popular restaurants around Los Angeles. But this time, it’s back with some much-needed upgrades: Reputed L.A. chefs and sandwich shops are finally doing the dish justice by using high-quality ingredients and adding their own signature touches — from organic fried chicken to chunks of falafel instead of croutons.
While Angelenos’ love affair with the Caesar salad has been ongoing since Italian chef Caesar Cardini debuted it in Tijuana in the 1920s, the inventor of the chicken Caesar wrap is a bit more mysterious. California Chicken Cafe opened in 1991 on Melrose Avenue and added a chicken Caesar wrap to its menu soon after in 1993. In 1997, fast food chain Wendy’s added its take to the menu (they’ve since been discontinued), giving the wrap nationwide exposure.
At Ggiata, an East Coast-style deli with five locations across L.A., the chicken Caesar wrap is inspired by the ones that co-founders and childhood friends Noah Holton-Raphael, Max Bahramipour and Jack Biebel grew up eating in New Jersey sandwich shops.
“Every neighborhood sandwich shop had a Caesar wrap on the menu — and if they didn’t then, they definitely do now,” said Holton-Raphael.
Since Ggiata launched its viral version in March 2024, the trend has picked up serious steam, inspiring iconic restaurants like Mini Kabob and Casa Vega to add the wrap to their menus.
No longer an afterthought, L.A.’s chicken Caesar wraps are made to order with ingredients like herb-blackened chicken, grain-free tortillas and house-made dressing that borrows inspiration from the salad’s Mexican origins. Here are 12 excellent chicken Caesar wraps (including one made with a baguette) to try around L.A. right now.
