Pret A Manger Opens First UK Drive-Thru, Expands Roadside Push
Pret's first UK drive-thru opens in Warrington with one lane, EV charging and a full menu, signaling a bigger push into roadside coffee.
Pret A Manger’s first UK drive-thru is less a gimmick than a clear format shift. The chain has taken a brand built on fast city-center grabs and parked it by the M6, betting that roadside coffee, breakfast and lunch can be just as valuable as office trade when the traffic pattern changes.
The new site opened on 5 May 2026 at BP Oakwood Gate Service Station in Birchwood, Warrington, just off junction 21 of the M6. It spans about 2,000 sq ft, has a single drive-thru lane, EV charging points and indoor seating for up to 48 customers. Pret also built in customer toilets, which matters more than it sounds in a roadside format where the stop is part coffee run, part travel break.
The menu is the other key clue. Pret said the drive-thru offers its full breakfast and lunch range, plus snacks, coffee and other hot and cold drinks, including smoothies. That is a broader play than the stripped-down beverage-led model many drivers expect from drive-thru coffee. For quality-minded customers, the real question is whether Pret can keep the line moving without flattening the menu into a worst-case version of itself. Speed helps only if the drinks come out with the same consistency, and that gets harder as a shop adds food, blended drinks and a wider daypart mix to a single-lane flow.
The launch also sits inside a much larger roadside strategy. Pret already operates 220 shops in airports, stations and motorway service areas across the UK, and 35 of those are run with Motor Fuel Group. The Warrington opening extends that relationship rather than inventing a new one from scratch. In September 2025, Pret said worldwide sales across company-owned and franchise shops rose 10% to £1.2bn for the year ended 2 January 2025, with pre-IFRS16 adjusted EBITDA up 36% to £98m and like-for-like sales up 2.8%.
Pret chief executive Pano Christou said the chain sees the potential for “300 to 400 travel locations” across airports, stations and motorway services, and the company had already signaled its first drive-thru for early 2026 before the Warrington opening. Industry reporting has said Pret entered motorway service areas in 2016, grew that network to around 60 roadside sites and planned about 30 more openings. That leaves the core test exactly where it should be: whether Pret’s premium sandwich-and-coffee formula can pull enough motorway volume to justify a drive-thru lane without losing the café feel that made the brand work in the first place.
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