We are absolutely delighted that Pret A Manger has won the Best Overall DevOps Project – Retail Sector category at the DevOps Industry Awards.

In 2019, before the pandemic, Pret had ambitious plans for growth. With a strong brand identity, but limited digital capability to interact with customers, or to understand their needs, Pret knew it was time not just to play catch up, but to leapfrog the competition.

​​Pret needed to implement a digital strategy which allowed for both a deeper understanding of their customers, and the ability to build a loyal customer base through ongoing engagement. This required a step change in their approach to digital innovation.

Working with the Pret team and taking lessons learned from building digital platforms at other organisations, Equal Experts and Pret devised a digital platform strategy that would accelerate delivery across multiple digital products. A platform team leveraged cloud tooling such as GCP Cloud Run, GCP Cloud Monitoring, and GitHub Actions to build a bespoke PaaS for Pret.  

I’ve found that investing in a digital platform when building Pret’s digital capability reduced duplication of effort, baked in continuous delivery and operability principles, and lightened the cognitive load needed for teams to build and run a digital service. It has enabled Pret to continuously deliver high-quality services right from the start. Ross Pyres, Global Head of Technology, Pret A Manger

During the early stages of the pandemic, the number of deployments ramped up quickly. In the first year of work on the first digital proposition, there were between 3-4,000 deployments. The best estimates predict that by the end of 2021, the total number of deployments since 2020 will be in excess of 10,000.

These numbers have been achieved in large part by radically reducing the lead time to production. This focus on reducing lead times has allowed Pret to sustain their ability to innovate and launch a number of new digital propositions to engage customers.

Well done to all the finalists and winners and thanks to the DevOps Industry Awards for a great event!