Pret A Manger has appointed Matthew Bresnahan as Chief Marketing Officer. (Source: Pret)
It’s a smart move for a brand doubling down on insight‑led growth, value for money, and product innovation across food and coffee.
Here’s what matters, and how you can use this news in your own strategy.
What Happened
The hire: Pret brought in Matthew Bresnahan as CMO after 12 years in senior international roles at Restaurant Brands International (Burger King, Tim Hortons).
The remit: He’ll lead global + local marketing, loyalty, product innovation, customer insights, PR, and delivery channels.
The context: Pret is pushing expansion in the UK and US with a sharper value story and faster innovation cycles in both food and coffee.
Why This Is A Big Deal For Marketers
The brands that win now do three things well:
Turn insights into rapid experiments,
Use pricing + value to protect frequency, and
Build lifetime loyalty beyond discounts.
Bresnahan’s background lines up with that playbook.
Expect tighter test-and-learn loops, clearer value messaging, and a loyalty experience that feels more habit-forming than promotional chasing.
The 5 takeaways you can apply this week
Design loyalty around routines, not points.
Map your top three customer routines (e.g., morning coffee + snack). Trigger benefits that reinforce the habit. If you’re refining your measurement stack, my guide to the most underrated analytics metrics shows how to detect habit strength (branded search, repeat cadence, rage‑click recovery) and tie it to LTV.
Package value, don’t just cut price.
Meal‑style bundles and “everyday value” protect perception. For creative angles that lift perceived value, steal ideas from marketing psychology techniques that boost sales—without a race to the bottom.
Speed up your content engine.
Pret’s growth depends on localised stories at scale. Use my ChatGPT prompts to save 15+ hours weekly to script variants, pre‑QA them, and ship daily without burning the team.
Refresh, don’t rebrand (yet).
As Pret sharpens its value promise, you can do the same without a full reset. See IBM’s rebrand playbook for a low‑risk messaging refresh that compounds brand equity.
Blend promo with participation.
Loyalty soars when customers do something with you. Borrow from UGC‑driven wins (think Spotify Wrapped mechanics) and use the tactics in social content that actually converts to turn everyday buyers into storytellers.
Bonus: If you sell into B2B, incentive design still works—responsibly. Start with our gift card demand gen framework to prime meetings without tanking deal quality.
What To Watch Next At Pret
Loyalty 2.0: Expect fewer generic discounts and more routine‑based benefits (e.g., subscription tiers, time‑of‑day boosts).
Value storytelling: Clear, simple value frames across menu and merchandising (offline + digital) to defend frequency.
Menu + coffee sprints: Faster test cycles and seasonal ladders that create momentum waves.
Delivery + convenience: Smarter packaging of on‑the‑go occasions tied to dayparts and locations.
Global consistency, local flair: Tighter brand codes globally with room for high‑signal local stories.
If you track leadership moves, we’ve been covering why CMO appointments matter for the craft: see Xerox names Darren Cassidy CMO—what it signals and TrueDialog’s CMO–CRO playbook for patterns you can reuse.
How Our Readers Can Benefit
Steal the structure: Lift Pret’s likely “insight → test → scale” loop for your next quarter.
Protect margin: Use bundles and habit‑rewards to grow frequency without endless discounting.
Operationalise local marketing: Give field teams a templated way to ship on‑brand, on‑value content in hours, not weeks.
If you’re job‑hunting or building a team, our curated lists of roles can help you move faster—start with the format we use in our remote marketing jobs roundup and adapt it for your own hiring posts.