Delegates at our AQA BUSSter course this week have been working through our new case study resource on sandwich chain Gambles - and then lo and behold a cracking article appears on the successful strategy being pursued by competitor sandwich chain Pret A Manger….

This Guardian interview is with CEO of Pret A Manger Clive Schlee.

The article and interview is absolutely packed with business studies terms and concepts - and is particularly useful for business strategy lessons. I highlighted the following points reading through a couple of times:

- The importance of customer service as a way to build customer loyalty (a source of competitive advantage in the highly competitive fast food market)

- A problematic international expansion

- Turnaround from losses in the early part of the decade after selling a stake to mcDonalds

- Targeting the key customer (in the case of Pret - the office worker who visits a store up to ten times per week)

- Very high staff turnover, despite strong financial and non-financial reward structures

- Store managers running their location as a profit centre