When Peter Boizot returned to Britain in the early 1960s after travelling around Europe, he realised that there was nothing to compare with the pizzas he had eaten in the trattorias of Florence. The opening of his first PizzaExpress, in Wardour Street, Soho, in 1965 launched a British love affair that endures to this day.
While PizzaExpress, which has just fallen into Chinese hands, remains the sector’s big brother, the appetite for pizzas has spawned everything from unashamed copies, such as ASK Italian, to innovative newcomers, like The Stable.
Its high street appeal is all the more remarkable, given the competition from takeaway operators such as Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s and the improving quality of supermarket pizzas, including a PizzaExpress-branded line.
According to a recent report on the British restaurant market by Allegra Foodservice, there are 1,347 branded pizza restaurants in the country, equating to a third of the branded full-service market, with takeaway brands accounting for another 1,365 outlets.
The report suggests that pizza is “inoffensive to everyone”, crossing ethnic, social and generational barriers.
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Peter Backman, managing director of Horizons, a food service consultancy, said that pizza chains appealed to Britons’ growing taste for informality. “Today’s diners want something reliable and more casual than they have in the past,” he said. “Successful Italian and pizza brands are somewhere you can take the family, meet friends or dine alone in. They tend to be open all day and, crucially, the consumer knows what they are getting and how much it will cost.”