by Henry VIII signs up for a coffee subscription and discovers a loyalty scheme demanding considerably more daily commitment than any royal oath
I once had coffee brewed fresh daily by a servant personally sworn to discretion regarding my morning temperament. Pret’s subscription required me to scan a code on my phone five times a week to claim a coffee I had already paid for monthly in advance.
The Subscription Terms
The scheme allowed up to five drinks daily for a fixed monthly fee, a generosity I found genuinely suspicious until Dev explained the real value lay simply in habitual daily use rather than any customer actually attempting to claim all five drinks, a business model I found considerably cleverer than several actual taxation systems I personally devised.
The Daily Ritual
I developed, within a fortnight, a genuine daily ritual around collecting my subscription coffee, a small act of routine I found unexpectedly grounding, having spent much of my original reign living in a state of near constant unpredictability that this modest, reliable daily coffee somehow directly counteracted.
The App Glitch
The application refused to register my subscription on one occasion, the barista, a patient young man named Sam, simply making my drink anyway on trust while the app sorted itself out, an act of quiet good faith I found genuinely touching given how thoroughly this century otherwise insists on digital verification for almost everything.
The Regular’s Recognition
Sam began preparing my order the moment he saw me enter, no words required, a level of personal recognition I have achieved in remarkably few establishments across either of my lifetimes, and I found this small, wordless understanding more satisfying than most formal introductions I once received from entire foreign courts.
The Unused Days
I calculated, with Dev’s help, that I genuinely used the subscription on average four days out of five, meaning the occasional missed day represented a small, quietly wasted portion of the monthly fee, a modest inefficiency I have chosen to accept gracefully rather than obsess over, a genuine growth for a man who once tracked every single coin in his own treasury personally.
The Verdict
I have renewed the subscription three months running now, Sam’s quiet recognition each morning becoming one of the small, genuine comforts of my week. I once required an entire household simply to ensure my coffee arrived correctly. I now require only a phone, a code, and Sam, and I have decided this represents, on balance, a considerably more efficient arrangement.
The Third Month
I have renewed the subscription three months running, Sam’s quiet recognition each morning becoming one of the genuine small comforts of my week. I once required an entire household simply for my coffee. I now require only a phone, a code, and Sam.
Small comforts, repeated daily, add up to something genuinely worth keeping. Sam’s coffee is, by now, a fixture of my diet plan. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: six pounds now apparently the going rate for a croissant on principle, the full rundown of London’s most judgmental cafes, the proper London pub where history finally sat down for a pint.
