A Pret sandwich can’t predict the pandemic, but its sales tell a story about how the world is unlocking

The switch from government control to personal responsibility is happening right across the globe, writes Hamish McRae

Post-Covid commute: People wearing protective face masks walk along a platform at King's Cross Station (REUTERS)

Guess what this race is about: London suburbs are in the lead, Hong Kong and the West End are coming up fast, Paris is well ahead of the City and Canary Wharf, New York Midtown is struggling and Wall Street is right at the back of the field.

It is the race back to the office, as measured by the performance of Pret A Manger locations vis-a-vis their pre-pandemic performance in January last year. Pret gives Bloomberg weekly data about their sales in major business centres around the world, hence the Pret Index. This gives a rough proxy for the numbers of people returning to central business districts – or in the case of London suburbs, probably working from home. Indeed those London suburbs are the only location where sales last week were above pre-pandemic levels. Hong Kong sales were at 83 per cent of the old normal, the West End was 75 per cent, Paris was at 71 per cent, the City and Canary Wharf at 51 per cent, then NYC Midtown at 37 per cent and NYC Downtown right down at 28 per cent of normal.

With this sort of fast data there are always two things to remember. One is that the numbers are raw. They tell the story as it is. This is not about what people say or think, or what their bosses say they should do. It is what they actually did last week.

The other is that as with all raw data you have to use your head in interpreting their message. So in the case of the West End and Midtown, the fact they score higher than the City or Wall Street is probably because the shops have opened, not that a higher proportion of people are back at their desks. “Revenge shopping” – I love that phrase – is back, as people catch up with a bit of a splurge after their months of confinement. I suspect too that the figures over-represent the scale of the move back to the office because people who have slogged in feel they deserve the treat of a flat white before they set to work.

Still, they are fascinating because this will be the story in the coming weeks. Restrictions everywhere are being relaxed. From next Monday the UK is trying to make personal responsibility the main shaper of our behaviour rather than government edict. Whether this is a good or bad idea to allow people to make their own choices is a separate issue. In France President Macron is taking a slightly different line, ruling out another lockdown but telling health workers to get jabs. In the US, different states have different rules but travel restrictions have been pretty much abandoned. It is still tricky to get into the US (and Hawaii is tough for all) but once you are there you can move about as you wish. And it looks as though US borders will open soon. The commerce secretary Gina Raimondo says that she is “pushing really hard” to open the country to visitors from abroad.

As for travel restrictions across Europe, well, they are on the way out. Whether this is right, how long these freedoms will last, whether it is a good idea to have two classes of travellers – those with double jabs and those without – all this will become clearer in the weeks ahead. But the reality is that the great switch from government control to personal responsibility is happening almost everywhere.

That will set the tone for the rest of the summer and the autumn. It will feel different. It won’t be a question of what people are allowed to do by government. It will be more about what society comes to regard as the right way to behave. So our working lives will be shaped by what employers advise and how employees respond, and our leisure by the local requirements of restaurants, sports venues and so on. If it feels strange, that is because we have become so accustomed to being told what we can and can’t do, it will seem odd making those decisions again for ourselves.

So watch those Pret sales. That will give us a real feeling for one crucial element of the march back to normality: how the world’s giant cities are recovering… and how much we value those small choices, like the decision between an Americano and a flat white.