Today could be a good day to go into a Pret a Manger and asking for a coffee in your nicest voice, with an extra big smile. That longed for free cappuccino could be yours. Yesterday’s announcement of JAB Holding’s £1.5bn takeover of the Pret chain was given an extra shot with the news that 12,000 employees worldwide would be getting a £1,000 payment once the deal goes through. It was the icing on the carrot cake.

The usually reliable bonhomie of Pret staff does not happen by chance. They do things a bit differently there. People are hired because of their attitude and personality, not on account of their experience in the retail sector. Teams see how potential new recruits shape up, and have some say on whether the new person gets the job permanently.

Mystery shoppers make weekly visits to each store, and if the ratings are high enough everyone gets a £1 bonus for every hour they worked that week. Around 80% of store managers started out as entry-level trainees.

At a time when many are rightly concerned about ever-decreasing job quality and the precariousness of employment, this reminder that there are other ways of managing people is refreshing.

But in case you thought I’d drunk the organic Kool Aid, it’s worth pointing out that Pret is not a wildly generous or flawless operation. The company is not an accredited living wage employer. Last month, the Advertising Standards Authority told Pret to stop using the word “natural” to describe all its products, since its bread has as many E numbers in it as a supermarket slice. Last year the company executed a rapid U-turn after initially trying to get teenagers to do unpaid shifts (but with free food!) as part of a work experience scheme. Pret is not a charity. If it were, its new German owners would not have coughed up £1.5bn for it.

The firm has been on the lookout for new, young employees because it fears a recruitment crunch in the context of Brexit. Astonishingly, Pret estimates that only one in 50 of its job applicants is British. As many as 65% of its staff are from the rest of the EU. So while some Brexiteers may still try to argue that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, no deal seems likely to mean no sandwiches as well.

The impressive diversity of Pret’s staff, reflected in the variety of names and national flags to be found on employees’ badges, may have something to do with the positive vibe the best-run stores display. Spontaneity and informality rule the day. Will Pret ever find it necessary to close down all their branches for an afternoon to run racism awareness training, as Starbucks did this week? It seems unlikely.

In fact, as we are encouraged to cower and panic ahead of the inevitable and irresistible march of the robots into almost every workplace in the land, Pret employees remind us that human beings still have quite a lot to offer. They can make nice food and sell it to us efficiently and politely. It is a winning formula.

Pret spotted a gap in the lunchtime market and made it its own. It’s not the cheapest deal on the block. Not everyone can afford to go there very often. And while the offer of £1,000 to every employee may sound impressive, it will actually represent only a small added cost of doing the takeover deal. It’s really the equivalent of one of those free cups of coffee some of us have been lucky enough to pick up at Pret over the years.

The important lesson from Pret’s success is that a good product that offers decent value for money will sell. And that treating people well at work will more than pay for itself over time. As the management consultant John DiJulius says in his book The Customer Service Revolution: “The best marketing is happy, engaged employees.” We can assume that, as of this morning, Pret’s employees are going to be bit happier and more fully engaged than they were a day or two ago.

• Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management and the former director of the High Pay Centre