We made some big, colourful changes to Pret’s menu this month: 20 new dishes hit our shelves, including more vegan and veggie options than ever before, new salad ranges, and our first ever gluten-free bread.

The new Asian-Style Veggie Box is already proving popular, as is our (not-so-veggie) Best Ever BLT. Lots of you have been trying our open sandwiches on gluten-free bread and the Smashed Avo topping is clearly winning the public vote so far.

I’ve also seen a number of questions from coeliacs about whether this range is suitable for them to eat. We wanted the new range to be freshly handmade, like all Pret’s sandwiches, and that’s why we make them in small batches in each of our shop’s kitchens rather than in one central production space.

The new recipe was perfected by Charlotte (one of our talented chefs) in our development kitchen, and we then worked in partnership with our supplier, BFree, to produce the recipe to a fully gluten-free standard. The bread gets delivered to our shop kitchens every morning, fully packaged, and we keep it inside our walk-in fridges until it’s ready to be used.

We have strict processes in place, such as thorough cleaning of preparation areas between batches, to reduce the risk of cross-contact between any of the 60 different products we make in our kitchens each day. However, as I’m sure you know, we make a lot of sandwiches and baguettes with regular bread, which means our kitchens are not gluten-free environments.

So whilst Pret’s gluten-free bread is made to strict gluten-free standards and we believe the risk of cross-contact with gluten in our kitchens is very low, we can’t remove it completely.

We’ve also been working to reduce the presence of the 14 EU allergens across our recipes wherever we can, without compromising on flavour. Over 70 of Pret’s recipes have now had one or more allergens removed - the majority of these are from the change to our seasoning which no longer contains celery or mustard. We’ve also removed sesame seeds from our stone-baked baguettes, replacing them with sunflower seeds to ensure we retain the texture and flavour of the bread. As we’ve talked about before, we’re also piloting new labels with full ingredient information on our freshly made products - these will help to make sure that everyone has the information they need to make the right choice for them.