His sympathy for his peers is tempered by his own restless energy to improve things. Even in such tough times, he says, “I would find a way [to make it work]. I wouldn’t just sit there groaning and feeling sorry for myself.” He rhapsodises about a “warm, chocolate-filled bao” – a soft, steamed Chinese bun – “breathtakingly delicious, and we’ll sell you that for £1.49. So forget the panna cotta”. Metcalfe the man – who talks movingly of the “empathy” his tragic childhood instilled in him – knows the pain the current crisis will inflict. “It’s awful.” Metcalfe the serial entrepreneur, however, spies an opportunity – and it is an opportunity to advance an astonishingly ambitious masterplan.
‘Two-year visas would solve all the issues overnight’
It will begin in a few weeks time in Paris, when the first of 50 new Itsus will open. Metcalfe, 62, thinks there is ample scope to bewitch the world’s self-appointed gastronomic champions. France, he says, “is pretty confident it has the best food in the world”. Wrong. There is plenty of ghastly food in France. And when it’s bad, “it’s monstrous”, he laments. As for “really posh French food” – he scrunches his youthful features (right cheek bearing the scar of a youthful car crash) into a “yuck” expression.
Yet at least France gives food, and the hospitality industry in general, the status it deserves. By contrast, “we Brits have never really been drawn to the service industry, or cooking. It’s always been looked down on”. Hence the difficulty British restaurants are having in finding local staff. “Serving people has never really been on our agenda. We avoid it.” Whether young Britons will ever want to wait tables is, he says, “a huge, huge worry”.
Should the Government intervene to spare the hospitality industry? There are three obvious fixes, he suggests: VAT, business rates and immigration. “VAT,” he says, “bring it down to 10 per cent. That would help enormously.” On rates, controlled by local authorities, he accepts it is harder for the Government to intervene. But rate rebates for the first two years of a tenancy, say, would help reverse the decline on our high streets. “You have to make councils realise that if you have totally empty high streets, you’re just kidding yourself. We’ve got many places where the rates are £300,000 a year, for nothing. Literally for nothing.” He doesn’t expect to see any change, though, especially now the Government has moved into austerity mode. “That horse has bolted.”
Nor is he optimistic about loosening immigration to help recruitment, though we speak just before the departure of the home secretary Suella Braverman, who particularly opposed such a measure. “The easiest thing would be to allow all [foreign] kids back into this country for two years,” he says. “Two-year visas would solve all the issues overnight. Not just restaurants, but care homes, NHS, lots of things. I’d back that tomorrow.” Taken together, the three measures would have high streets “up and running again in six months, vibrant and exciting”.
He knows what he’s talking about. In 1986, then 27, he and university friend Sinclair Beecham founded Pret a Manger, fitting out a shop in Victoria Street, central London, with an oven paid for with an inheritance. The story goes that office workers were so astonished to discover take-away food that was actually edible, that long queues started to form – and the two founders had to pre-prepare sandwiches, in a formula that Pret continues to this day. The problem was that, as success bloomed, they couldn’t find staff, despite paying more than competitors. Then, with growing freedom of movement, “all these charming, well-skilled, really fantastic kids from Spain and France and Italy flooded over to this country. And they changed our food forever in this country, and so quickly. We went from shocking, I mean really appalling [food], to amazing.”
‘You get out of life what you put into it’
He speaks with evident enthusiasm about Pret’s early years, as though it were a gap-year adventure – except with the foreign friends imported to Britain. That sense of fun and respect and camaraderie helped foster, he insists, “better service than at Tiffany”. It also made his fortune. In 2008 he and Beecham sold Pret to private equity firm Bridgepoint for £364 million.
These days, though, he makes it plain he is not enthused by what has happened to his baby. I ask if he keeps a paternal eye on Pret. “I try not to.” Still, Pret’s current CEO, Pano Christou, reportedly sought his advice during the pandemic. The foundations he put in place, he says, means “it’ll take years before it’s…” He starts again. “If they ever damage it completely, it’ll still run for some time.” When I suggest that the glorious staff spirit of yore is not so in evidence today, he has to look away and literally bite his lip.
But if he mourns Pret, there is comfort in that he has come to realise its limitations. “That type of food? Chilled sandwich in a box?” he says with astonishing derision for a man who made his name on the back of it. “They don’t even eat it in most countries. They really don’t. You can’t really do much with that.” It’s a bold statement for a chain with 400 outlets in Britain, which was sold in 2018 for £1.5 billion. Itsu, which now appears to occupy Metcalfe’s unceasing attention night and day, has a mere 74. But the point is that, unlike Pret, he reckons Itsu’s Asian-inflected fast food has global appeal, and with relentless automation, menu refinement and cost-control, it can deliver quality meals at a price to rival chains like McDonald’s – which has about 40,000 outlets and is worth $184 billion.
