Cancel by September if you don’t want the replacement
Just last month, Leon announced its subscription to rival Pret’s five-a-day for £30 offer, but we’ve now had news that the Pret subscription is set to end, at least in its current format. Here’s what’s happening and what you need to do if you’re getting the subscription.
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What is the Pret subscription?
Club Pret is a monthly subscription that gets you five barista-made drinks at no extra cost every day and 20% off additional purchases, including food. It was introduced in 2020 with a free trial and cost just £20 per month. We have a review of the subscription, including details of how many you’d need to break even and whether we reckon it’s worth it.
What is changing?
Pret sent an email to its Club Pret Subscribers on Thursday 18 July to announce that the current subscription will end in September. After this, you won’t be able to get five barista-made drinks for free each day.
Instead, Pret is changing the subscription one to give you a discount instead — more on this below.
Pret claims it initially introduced the subscription to help it return customers to its stores and recover after the pandemic but has opted to rethink how it works.
When are the changes?
The current subscription will end in September and will take effect from your first billing date after 2 September 2024. This means that if you’re currently paying for your subscription on the 1 or 2 of each month, you may be able to get it into October, but you’ll be moved after this.
What will the new subscription look like?
The new subscription will cost £10 per month (although it will cost £5 each month until 21 March 2025). Instead of getting five free barista-made drinks each day at no extra cost, you get 50% off five drinks per day. You’ll no longer get a discount on food with the subscription.
So if you previously got 20 of its most expensive drinks (the Cooler Lemonades at £4.20 each) every month, you’d have spent just £30 on the subscription. Whereas with the new subscription, it’ll cost you £47 per month from September and £52 per month when it rises to £10 each month.
This is still a discount of 44% on the cost of the drinks initially (38% at £10 per month), but you previously had savings of nearly 65%, so this is a huge letdown on the original offer.
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Is the new Pret subscription worth it?
If you were to get 20 lattes per month, around one every weekday, you’d usually spend about £4.05 for each one — a total of £81 each month. With the original subscription, this would’ve cost £30 per month, saving you £51.
With the new subscription at £5, you’d spend £45.50 on the subscription and the coffees. Once it goes up to £10 per month, that will rise to £50.50 per month. You’d still have a saving of £30 on the original cost of the lattes, but you could previously save a lot more.
| Pret’s old subscription | Pret’s new subscription £10 | Pret’s new subscription £5 | Leon Roast Rewards | |
| Cost of a latte | £4.05 | £4.05 | £4.05 | £4.09 |
| Subscription cost | £30.00 | £10.00 | £5.00 | £25.00 |
| Cost for 20 drinks | £81.00 | £81.00 | £81.00 | £81.80 |
| Total monthly cost | £30.00 | £50.50 | £45.50 | £25.00 |
| Savings | £51.00 – 63% | £30.50 – 38% | £35.50 – 44% | £56.80 – 69% |
How much is the new subscription?
The first six months from September will cost £5 per month. After this, it’ll cost £10 per month.
What you need to do
If you want to get the new Club Pret subscription and you’re happy to pay £5 per month for it, you don’t need to do anything.
However, if you don’t want it, you need to cancel your Club Pret subscription before your September billing date, or you’ll be charged £5 and moved to the new subscription.
And of course, after six months it’ll increase to £10 a month, so you’ll need to decide then if it’s worth keeping too.
You could consider the Leon Roast Rewards subscription which is similar to the Pret one at a lower £25 per month if you’re looking for a replacement subscription for your coffee fix.
Much as I loathe the way Pret keep increasing their prices (I rarely go there now), I was pleasantly surprised to find that a filter coffee using my reusable cup had reduced in price from £1.30 to £0.49 when I visited earlier this week (reusable cups give 50p off the normal price).
That’s the pre-covid price before a series of agressive price rises since then pushed it up to the £1.30 level.
For people who are too lazy to work it out for themselves.
There’s a ridiculous number of these now. My inbox is littered with them.