Pret a Manger delivers more free meals with Maxoptra

Pret a Manger says that, by using Maxoptra’s software and mobile app, it has been able to deliver an additional 1,000 free meals to vulnerable and homeless people across London

The Pret Foundation collects surplus and unsold food and delivers it to charities and community groups across the UK. In London, it operates its own fleet of vehicles collecting from around 200 stores, 365 days a year, delivering to more than 20 frontline organisations.

Before implementing Maxoptra, daily collection, delivery schedules and routes were created using a combination of local knowledge, prior experience and online mapping tools. However, now that it has access to route planning algorithms, it has been able to support an increase in the number of stores it makes daily collections from and has added another 23 charitable organisations to its delivery schedule.

“Put simply Maxoptra allows us to do more,” comments Juanita Cracchiolo, UK Pret Foundation Manager. “We have the same number of vehicles, the same number of drivers, yet we are able to feed an additional 1,000 people each and every day.”

Pret is also making use of the Driver App. Changes to the planned activity can be directly communicated to drivers and records of collections completed and deliveries made are automatically logged in the back office system. The solution also gives fleet managers at Pret the ability to balance driver and vehicle use, control emissions and costs and, with integration with in-cab tracking and dash cams, improve health and safety monitoring.