Pret Index shows City running on empty

The City and Canary Wharf are almost devoid of workers, according to Bloomberg’s latest count of sandwich sales. The Pret Index, which monitors sales at the sandwich chain to gauge how many people are working in the areas, shows that transactions have fallen to below a third of pre-pandemic levels. Sales at Pret in the UK’s financial heartland were at their lowest level last week since May 2021, when the country was in lockdown. The drop is seen as a result of most employers in the area heeding government guidance and telling staff to work from home. Pret has been providing the weekly sales data to Bloomberg since January 2020. While the resulting index only measures transactions at Pret’s stores, it is viewed as a proxy for the health of city centre trading. Pret registered a similar drop in trading in New York, with sales slumping in the financial district of Wall Street and Tribeca. The Times (£)