Legends in their own lunchtime

Like all good business propositions, Pret a Manger founder Julian Metcalfe's was a simple one, forged not in a boardroom but on lunchtime trips to the local baker. "Why should people put up this crap?" he thought to himself, upon being handed two pieces of floppy white bread with a slice of anaemic ham for the umpteenth time.

That was back in the early Eighties, when old Harrovian Metcalf was a student of urban estate management at Central London Polytechnic, where he met co-founder Sinclair Beecham, a student of estate management. Town planning ambitions abandoned and, still dreaming of luxury baguettes, they opened their first shop in Westminster in 1986.

The over-riding emphasis - using fresh, organic ingredients, avoiding pre-packaging and processed foodstuffs - was a revolution in lunchtime eating.

Today Pret a Manger - known simply as "Pret" to most customers - has around 100 shops and employs some 2,500 staff.

The company is moving into Europe and has already conquered the city known as the toughest sandwich market in the world - New York.

Those who have met Metcalf describe him as a perfectionist, who brings the obsessive drive to the concept of the ten-minute lunch that a Michelin-starred chef might bring to a three-hour one. Of the two - they describe their partnership as "the perfect match" - Beecham is the academic number cruncher.