Pret subscription removed from campus shop for “health and safety reasons”
From 27 September 2022 customers will no longer be able to use their Pret subscription in the Forum Pret on Streatham Campus. A University spokesperson told Exeposé that “this decision has been made for health and safety reasons”.
The subscription allows customers to order five ‘Barista-made drinks’ per day for £25 per month. This service is popular among students on campus, as the queue for the Forum Pret was notoriously long throughout the 2021-2022 academic year.
A University spokesperson said: “The University of Exeter regularly reviews its food and drinks provisions across its campuses to ensure that the needs and requirements of students, staff and visitors alike are met. Outlets are tailored and adapted in response to customer preferences and use, as well as feedback.”
”The University enjoys a strong relationship with Pret-A-Manger, and is proud that the Streatham Campus was the first campus in the UK to have an embedded outlet. Since opening, the outlet has undergone a number of changes to ensure that it provides the very best experience for customers. Following discussions with Pret, the University outlet will remove the Pret Coffee Subscription from being on offer. This decision has been made for health and safety reasons, to help reduce the sometimes large queues developing outside the outlet in the main Forum area. Subscriptions will be available to use in other Pret outlets. The University and Pret apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
This decision has been made for health and safety reasons, to help reduce the sometimes large queues developing outside the outlet in the main Forum area
University of Exeter spokesperson
Reacting to the news, one student stated: “I’m finding it really frustrating to have lost access to the Pret subscription at uni, having found it an affordable way to motivate me to stay and use the library facilities. I’m definitely cancelling my subscription now that I have no need for it, and am wholly disappointed that the uni seems to have been involved in the decision to remove the subscription at this site. It seems there is now a lack of affordable options to have more than one drink per day on site.”
A Pret spokesperson told Exeposé: “Our Pret Coffee Subscription was the first of its kind and we always said that we would be learning as we go. Each of our shops is unique and tailored to different customers’ preferences and local demands, and in this instance, we have decided to remove the Subscription from this shop following discussions with The University of Exeter.”
“Customers can continue to use their Subscription at the vast majority of our UK shops, including our nearby Exeter shop – about a mile away. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
It’s sad, the way they removed the subscription.
Another local compromise to Pret A Manger subscriptions is the High St, Exeter, branch displaying notices asking customers to stay a maximum of one hour per visit. That is potentially incompatible with a subscription giving up to five drinks a day with a minimum 30 minutes between each: must subscribers leave the cafe after an hour and immediately step back in, or wolf down two drinks indoors within the hour and then order one takeaway drink?
This seems illogical, disingenuous, and perhaps not the whole story.
Why not just restrict numbers in the queue, allocate a dedicated time window to each subscriber, and/or ask customers to queue outwards of the Forum door rather than within the building, instead of withdrawing the subscription entirely?
And have any PAM-derived health-and-safety problems actually arisen in the Forum during the past two years of this scheme operating?
Could it be something to do with Starbucks recently supplanting Costa in the rival cafe unit upstairs? A stipulation/concession for Starbucks to open without being handicapped by cheap PAM subscriptions?